Quotes from Anil's Ghost

“ I wanted to find one law to cover all of living. I found fear....”
― Michael Ondaatje, quote from Anil's Ghost

“Jung was absolutely right about one thing. We are occupied by gods. The mistake is to identify with the god occupying you.”
― Michael Ondaatje, quote from Anil's Ghost

“American movies, English books - remember how they all end?" Gamini asked that night. "The American or the Englishman gets on a plane and leaves. That's it. The camera leaves with him. He looks out of the window at Mombasa or Vietnam or Jakarta, someplace now he can look at through the clouds. The tired hero. A couple of words to the girl beside him. He's going home. So the war, to all purposes, is over. That's enough reality for the West. It's probably the history of the last two hundred years of Western political writing. Go home. Write a book. Hit the circuit.”
― Michael Ondaatje, quote from Anil's Ghost

“For when people leave our company in our time we are never certain of seeing them again, or seeing them unaltered.”
― Michael Ondaatje, quote from Anil's Ghost

“Secrets turn powerless in the open air.”
― Michael Ondaatje, quote from Anil's Ghost

“The important thing is to be able to live in a place or a situation where you must use your sixth sense all the time.”
― Michael Ondaatje, quote from Anil's Ghost

“A person will walk through a hundred doors to carry out the whims of the dead, not realizing he is burying himself away from the others.”
― Michael Ondaatje, quote from Anil's Ghost

“At night, returning from work, Anil would slip out of her sandals and stand in the shallow water, her toes among the white petals, her arms folded as she undressed the day, removing layers of events and incidents so they would no longer be within her. She would stand there for a while, then walk wet-footed to bed.”
― Michael Ondaatje, quote from Anil's Ghost

“I don't think clarity is necessarily truth. It's simplicity, isn't it?”
― Michael Ondaatje, quote from Anil's Ghost

“You're an archaeologist. Truth comes finally into the light. It's in the bones and sediment.

It's in character and nuance and mood.

That is what governs us in our lives, that's not the truth.

For the living it is the truth.”
― Michael Ondaatje, quote from Anil's Ghost

“I can never understand someone by his strengths. Nothing is revealed there. I can only understand people by their weaknesses.”
― Michael Ondaatje, quote from Anil's Ghost

“Even if you are a monk, like my brother, passion or slaughter will meet you someday. For you cannot survive as a monk if society does not exist. You renounce society, but to do so you must first be a part of if, learn your decision from it. This is the paradox of retreat. My brother entered temple life. He escaped the world and the world came after him. He was seventy when he was killed by someone, perhaps someone from the time when he was breaking free - for that is the difficult stage, when you leave the world.”
― Michael Ondaatje, quote from Anil's Ghost

“...small talk plunged to its death around him.”
― Michael Ondaatje, quote from Anil's Ghost

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Popular quotes

“There are some things that are neither right nor wrong. You can’t have rules laid down for. Would you understand that?” “Yes,” Clare said immediately, “I would. Like the Holy Ghost.” “Like what?” “Like the Holy Ghost. We have to believe in Him without understanding Him. He’s not a bird and He’s not a great wind. He’s something though, and that should be enough without understanding it.” “I don’t think that’s the same at all,” said Agnes, troubled. “But if it helps you to understand the problems of trade in a small town, then for heaven’s sake, use it.”
― Maeve Binchy, quote from Echoes

“As an observer, I am particularly interested in watching women, married, divorced, single. So many of them trapped in lives they think they must live, in roles they have come to resent, with little job and no laughter. They've "settled." They've compromised. They've learned to adjust.

Among the divorced, many are bitter, coloring their lives with resentment; others live only to meet the man who will complete them.

I have no intentions of adjusting, and I am not looking to define myself by the man I am with. The new me is feeling rebellious, looking for excitement, bursting with energy to explore. There is no way that I am going to sit around feeling sorry for myself, thinking that the only way I can enjoy life is with a man.

With no possessions, no home, and no precedent, I am free to design a life that fits me. Best of all, I have tasted the life I want. My Mexican adventure opened me up. I want more. During my four months away, I met interesting people, I was never bored, and I laughed more than I had in years. I resolve to continue exploring the world, ignoring the THEY who define how people should live.”
― quote from Tales of a Female Nomad: Living at Large in the World

“On that day so long ago, in the year nineteen hundred and thirty-seven, in the Massacre River, my mother did fly. Weighted down by my body inside hers, she leaped from Dominican soil into the water, and out again on the Haitian side of the river. She glowed red when she came out, blood clinging to her skin, which at that moment looked as though it were in flames.”
― Edwidge Danticat, quote from Krik? Krak!

“Novelists should never allow themselves to weary of the study of real life. If they observed this duty conscientiously, they would give us fewer pictures chequered with vivid contrasts of light and shade; they would seldom elevate their heroes and heroines to the heights of rapture — still seldomer sink them to the depths of despair; for if we rarely taste the fulness of joy in this life, we yet more rarely savour the acrid bitterness of hopeless anguish.”
― Charlotte Brontë, quote from The Professor

“Your security is not your job, or your bank account, or your investments, or your spouse or parents. Your security is your ability to connect with the cosmic power that creates all things.”
― Louise L. Hay, quote from You Can Heal Your Life

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About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.