Michael Ondaatje
Michael Ondaatje
Philip Michael Ondaatje, OC, is a Sri Lankan-born Canadian novelist and poet. He won the Booker Prize for his novel The English Patient, which was adapted as the 1996 film of the same name...
NationalityCanadian
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth12 September 1943
CountryCanada
writing space people
There's a lot of thievery involved in writing. You're breaking into other people's spaces and other people's stories.
kids writing giving
People don't write about kids; you have to give them a lot of freedom, and that causes anarchy and that causes farce.
writing lovers blind
A blind lover, don't know what I love till I write it out
writing would-be
To write about someone like myself would be very limiting.
writing world kind
When you're writing, it's as if you're within a kind of closed world.
writing ideas no-idea
Right now, I have no idea what I will write or if I will write again.
writing want opinion
You don't want to write your own opinion, you don't want to just represent yourself, but represent yourself through someone else.
writing god-knows has-beens
I see myself as someone who's been saved by writing. God knows what I would have been, become or how I would have ended up without it.
writing bored stories
I don't have a plan for a story when I sit down to write. I would get quite bored carrying it out.
notebook cat writing
If she were a writer she would collect her pencils and notebooks and favourite cat and write in bed. Strangers and lovers would never get past the locked door.
writing stories plot
When I write my novels I don't really have a huge plan beforehand; I don't have the whole plot and architecture, so the story is sort of discovered as I write it.
book writing discovery
It's a discovery of a story when I write a book, a case of inching ahead on each page and discovering what's beyond in the darkness, beyond where you're writing.
writing views perception
It doubles your perception, to write from the point of view of someone you're not.
writing thinking hands
I think precision in writing goes hand in hand with not trying to say everything. You try and say two-thirds, so the reader will involve himself or herself.