Michael Ondaatje · 156 pages
Rating: (4.8K votes)
“This last night we tear into each other, as if to wound, as if to find the key to everything before morning.”
― Michael Ondaatje, quote from Coming Through Slaughter
“But there was a discipline, it was just that we didn't understand. We thought he was formless, but I think now he was tormented by order, what was outside it. He tore apart the plot - see his music was immediately on top of his own life. Echoing. As if, when he was playing he was lost and hunting for the right accidental notes. Listening to him was like talking to Coleman. You were both changing direction with every sentence, sometimes in the middle, using each other as a springboard through the dark. You were moving so fast it was unimportant to finish and clear everything. He would be describing something in 27 ways. There was pain and gentleness everything jammed into each number.”
― Michael Ondaatje, quote from Coming Through Slaughter
“The right ending is an open door you can't see too far out of. It can mean exactly the opposite of what you are thinking.”
― Michael Ondaatje, quote from Coming Through Slaughter
“There was no control except the "mood of his power... and it is for this reason it is good you never heard him play someplace where the weather for instance could change the next series of notes-- then you should never have heard him at all. He was never recorded. He stayed away while others moved into wax history, electronic history, those who said later that Boldon broke the path. It was just as important to watch him stretch and wheel around the last notes or to watch nerves jumping under the sweat of his head.”
― Michael Ondaatje, quote from Coming Through Slaughter
“as if he were trying to escape the smell of her words as if the air from her talking came into his mouth and filled it puffed it up with poison so the brain was put to sleep and he could do nothing with it only react in his flesh.”
― Michael Ondaatje, quote from Coming Through Slaughter
“It was a music that had so little wisdom you wanted to clean nearly every note he passed, passed it seemed along the way as if travelling in a car, passed before he even approached it and saw it properly. There was no control except the mood of his power … and it is for this reason it is good you never heard him play on recordings. If you never heard him play some place where the weather for instance could change the next series of notes—then you should never have heard him at all. He was never recorded.”
― Michael Ondaatje, quote from Coming Through Slaughter
“But his own mind was helpless against every moment's headline. He did nothing but leap into the mass of changes and explore them and all the tiny facets so eventually he was completely governed by fears of certainty. He distrusted it in anyone but Nora for there it went to the spine, and yet he attacked it again and again in her, cruelly, hating it, the sure lanes of the probable. Breaking chairs and window glass doors in fury at her certain answers. [15-16]”
― Michael Ondaatje, quote from Coming Through Slaughter
“Once they were sitting at the kitchen table opposite each other. To his right and to her left was a window. Furious at something he drew his right hand across his body and lashed out. Half way there at full speed he realized it was a window he would be hitting and breaked. For a fraction of a second hid open palm touched the glass, beginning simultaneously to draw back. The window scarred and crumpled slowly two floors down. His hand miraculously uncut. It had acted exactly like a whip violating the target and still free, retreating from the outline of a star. She was delighted by the performance. Surprised he examined his fingers. [p.16]”
― Michael Ondaatje, quote from Coming Through Slaughter
“Always listening, listening to the wet fluid speech with no order, unfinished stories, badly told jokes that he sober as a spider perfected in silence.”
― Michael Ondaatje, quote from Coming Through Slaughter
“But there was a discipline, it was just that we didn’t understand. We thought he was formless, but I think now he was tormented by order, what was outside it. He tore apart the plot—see his music was immediately on top of his own life. Echoing. As if, when he was playing he was lost and hunting for the right accidental notes.”
― Michael Ondaatje, quote from Coming Through Slaughter
Michael Ondaatje
Born place: in Colombo, Sri Lanka
Born date September 12, 1943
See more on GoodReads
“Y'know — Babylon once had two million people in it, and all we know about 'em is the names of the kings and some copies of wheat contracts . . . and contracts for the sale of slaves. Yet every night all those families sat down to supper, and the father came home from his work, and the smoke went up the chimney,— same as here. And even in Greece and Rome, all we know about the real life of the people is what we can piece together out of the joking poems and the comedies they wrote for the theatre back then.
So I'm going to have a copy of this play put in the cornerstone and the people a thousand years from now'll know a few simple facts about us — more than the Treaty of Versailles and the Lind-bergh flight.
See what I mean?
So — people a thousand years from now — this is the way we were in the provinces north of New York at the beginning of the twentieth century. — This is the way we were: in our growing up and in our marrying and in our living and in our dying.
Said by the Stage Manager”
― Thornton Wilder, quote from Our Town
“God's Teeth,' he says. 'I was only trying to wake you. You were crying out in your sleep.'
'I was not,' I say, then look from his neck to my knife.
'When I tried to wake you, you stabbed me.' He sounds sore put out. and I cannot blame him.”
― Robin LaFevers, quote from Grave Mercy
“What about an axman?" he said. Gilan looked at him, nonplussed for a moment.
"An axman?" he asked.
"Yes," said Horace, warming to his theme. "What about if you're facing an enemy with a battleax? Do your knives work then?"
Gilan hesitated. "I wouldn't advise anyone face a battleax with just two knives," he said carefully.
"So what should I do?" Will joined in. Gilan glared from one boy to the other. He had the feeling he was being set up.
"Shoot him," he said shortly. Will shook his head, grinning.
"Can't," he said. "My bowstring's broken."
"Then run and hide," said Gilan, between gritted teeth.
"But there's a cliff," Horace pointed out. "A sheer drop behind him and an angry axman coming at him."
"What do I do?" prompted Will.
Gilan took a deep breath and looked them both in the eye, one after the other.
"Jump off the cliff. It'll be less messy that way.”
― John Flanagan, quote from The Burning Bridge
“Om meditation makes the mind spacious. It gives the freedom for focus and divergent thinking. Divergent thinking is the center of human creativity.”
― Amit Ray, quote from Om Chanting and Meditation
“I don't consider myself as a bad person, on the whole I consider myself a good person, I'm good to my parents. I treat my girl right ,,, take her out and buy her stuff. And I go to church every Sunday, But I've decided that just once I wanna do a really bad thing. I mean a really seriously bad thing. 'cause, ya know, like, we're put on this earth with free will. We can choose to do this or that. We can choose to be good or bad. But sometimes I think most people are good and not bad only because they're scared they might go to jail or hell or someplace. Some guy once said: "Anything done out of fear has no moral value." Well, I think that's right. I figure the only way you can be truly good is if you've tried been good, and you've tried being bad, and being good feels better.”
― Alan Moore, quote from Batman: The Killing Joke
Stumbling on Happine...
The Book of Strange...
Terminal
The Love That Split...
The Compound
Dark AgeBookQuoters 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.
