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

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― John Marrs, quote from The Good Samaritan

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“Wishing I had a towel, I used my fingers to wipe the raindrops off my face. My wet face that had been partially protected by the brim of his cap. Which would have worked if the rain fell straight down. This had been slashing across.
“Oh, no.”
“What?” Jason said.
“Turn on the light.”
He did. I lowered the sun visor, looked at my reflection in the mirror, groaned, and slapped the visor back into place. “Turn the light off.”
“What’s wrong?”
I didn’t look at him, didn’t want him to see. “The makeup ran.”
Not as badly as I’d expected, but I had dark smudges beneath my eyes and my bruising was more visible.
“So what?”
I leaned my head back. “I look worse than I did the night you met me.”
“I thought you looked fine.”
I rolled my head to the side, so I could see him. Hoping the shadows made it so he couldn’t see me. “What are you talking about? I looked like a Cirque de Soleil performer.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The black dots around my eyes?”
He shook his head. “I’m lost.”
“You were staring--”
“Oh, yeah.” He gazed through the windshield. “Sorry about that. I’ve just never seen eyes as green as yours. I was trying to figure out if you wore contacts.”
“You were looking at my eyes?”
“Yeah.”
“Not the makeup.”
He turned his attention back to me. “I didn’t realize you were wearing any. That night, anyway. Tonight it’s pretty obvious.”
“Oh.” Didn’t I feel silly? “I thought--” I shook my head. “Never mind.” On second thought…
“You don’t like all the makeup?”
“I just don’t think you need it. I mean, you look pretty without it.”
Oh, really? That was totally unexpected.
He started tapping the steering wheel like he was listening to a rock concert, or suddenly embarrassed, maybe wishing someone would shut him up. “Sorry I don’t have a towel in the car.”
Subject change. He was embarrassed. How cute was that?”
― Rachel Hawthorne, quote from The Boyfriend League

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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.