Michael Ondaatje Quotes

My job gives me the permission to ask really great questions, like, 'Are you sure you're not pissed at him?' or, 'Is the eating really about food, or does it have something to do with your mother?' or, 'How is your sex life? I mean, I know we're here talking about your job, but I can tell this has to do with your sex life.'

The shreiking fight or the out-of-character insult endures forever, while the daily sweetness dissolves like sugar in water.

I sat on the bed. Neither of us said anything. I wasn't slick and sophisticated enough for this. What do you say to boyfriend A when he finds you naked in the bed of boyfriend B? Especially if boyfriend A turned into a monster the night before and ate someone. I bet Miss Manners didn't cover this at all.

I'm sure that there are many Israelis who dream of waking up one day to find the Palestinians gone. And there are many Palestinians who dream of going to bed at night and waking up the next morning to find the Israelis gone.

There’s no use saying anything in the schoolyard because there’s always someone with an answer and there’s nothing you can do but punch them in the nose and if you were to punch everyone who has an answer you’d be punching morning noon and night.

Oh yes, we're going to brawl, baby. Over you. Again.

I hate you!” I screamed at Fang. Tucking my wings in, I aimed downward, diving toward the ground at more than two hundred miles an hour. “No you dooonnn’t!” Fang’s voice spiraled away into nothingness, far above me. Inside my head, almost drowned out by the roar of wind rushing by my ears, I heard the Voice make a tsking sound. You guys are crazy about each other, it said.

Fang and I are always fighting. When we get up in the morning, we don't kiss; we touch gloves.

I had a relationship with an Italian chick that was built on just fighting and sex. As much as all women won't let go of stuff, Italian girls won't let go of anything. And she punched really hard. I got tired of the arguing it took to get to the sex.

When a girl uses six derogatory adjectives in her attempt to paint the portrait of the loved one, it means something. One may indicate a merely temporary tiff. Six is big stuff.

With sex my wife thinks twice before she turns me down. Yeah, once in the morning and once at night.

I'm sorry," she says. I wheel around. "You know, you're a total know-it-all. And it's incredibly rude sometimes; I mean, you're not perfect either, and you act like it's my fault but it's not my fault for being quiet or your fault for being a know-it-all. It's not your problem or my problem; it's their problem. They're the demented ones, not us, so don't take it out on me, because the only thing that holds things together for me is having someone else on the Not Demented Team.

O love, O fire! once he drew With one long kiss my whole soul through My lips, as sunlight drinketh dew.

Married couples who quarrel bitterly every day may really need each other as deeply as those who appear to be desperately in love.

You wear out a good wholesome forenoon in hearing a cause between an orange wife and a fosset-seller.

Your woman pisses you off so that gets in there; that's rock n roll.

I remember being absolutely rocked to my core by how profoundly I could love another human being.

She made me feel better than I have ever felt, better than I imagined I could feel, and it scared me, it scared me to the point of paralysis.

Because he says he can't stand you and you act like you can't stand him, and whenever a man and a woman behave like that toward each other, it usually means something's going on.

Idiotic reply, June. Why don't you punch him in the face while you're at it. I turn even more flustered when I remember that I have actually pistol-whipped him in the face before. Romantic

[Marriage] is the merciless revealer, the great white searchlight turned on the darkest places of human nature.

And now, as I'm lying alone in my own bed, I keep thinking about writhing against him last night, naked and vulnerable. Even after we'd both risen and fallen, peaked and plummeted, even after Marcus was physically shrinking from inside me, I couldn't stop clutching, crying, trying. Trying to pull him deeper, deeper, deeper within. Trying to make him more a part of me than I am myself.

There is not so good an understanding between any two, but the exposure by the one of a serious fault in the other will produce a misunderstanding in proportion to its heinousness.

And where two raging fires meet together, they do consume the thing that feeds their fury.

You think you are killing me. I think you are committing suicide.