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She Had Lived In That House Fourteen Years, And Every Year She Had Demanded Of John That She Be Given A Pet Of Some Strange Exotic Breed. Not That She Did Not Have Enough Animals. She Had Collected Several Wild And Broken Animals That, In A Way, Had Become Exotic By Their Breaking. Their Roof Would Have Collapsed From The Number Of Birds Who Might Have Lived There If The Desert Hadn't Killed Three- Quarters Of Those That Tried To Cross It. Still Every Animal That Came Within A Certain Radius Of That House Was Given A Welcome-the Tame, The Half Born, The Wild, The Wounded.

-Michael Ondaatje

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She Had Lived In

Michael Ondaatje

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She Had Lived In That House Fourteen Years, And Every Year She Had Demanded Of John That She Be Given A Pet Of Some Strange Exotic Breed. Not That She Did Not Have Enough Animals. She Had Collected Several Wild And Broken Animals That, In A Way, Had Become Exotic By Their Breaking. Their Roof Would Have Collapsed From The Number Of Birds Who Might Have Lived There If The Desert Hadn't Killed Three- Quarters Of Those That Tried To Cross It. Still Every Animal That Came Within A Certain Radius Of That House Was Given A Welcome-the Tame, The Half Born, The Wild, The Wounded.

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A Writer Uses A Pen Instead Of A Scalpel Or Blow Torch.

I Kind Of Was Shoveled Onto A Boat At 11 And Went To England. I Didn't Have Any Parent Watching Over Me. It Was Very Free And May Have Been A Bit Of A Scary Time For Me, But I Really Don't Remember Much About The Voyage Apart From Playing Ping-pong A Lot With A Couple Friends.

We Die Containing A Richness Of Lovers And Tribes, Tastes We Have Swallowed, Bodies We Have Plunged Into And Swum Up As If Rivers Of Wisdom, Characters We Have Climbed Into As If Trees, Fears We Have Hidden In As If Caves. I Wish For All This To Be Marked On By Body When I Am Dead. I Believe In Such Cartography - To Be Marked By Nature, Not Just To Label Ourselves On A Map Like The Names Of Rich Men And Women On Buildings. We Are Communal Histories, Communal Books. We Are Not Owned Or Monogamous In Our Taste Or Experience.

Sadness Is Very Close To Hate.

Come. We Must Go Deeper With No Justice And No Jokes.

I Don't See Novels Ending With Any Real Sense Of Closure.

You Are Doing Something Over Here And Over There Someone Is Telling You A Joke, Or Giving You An Important Piece Of Information About Sanitation, And No Matter How Weird The Other Subject Is, There Is A Connection, Or You Can Make A Connection. I’ve Always Loved History And History Is Collage, It Is A Juxtaposition Of The Good And The Bad And The Strange, And How You Place Those Sentences Together Changes The Whole Mood Of A History.

One Of The Things That Happens In Novels It's Almost Like A Continual Debate With Yourself. That's Why You're Writing The Book. It's Why You Create Characters: So You Can Argue With Yourself.

Every Immigrant Family, It Seems, Has Someone Who Does Not Belong In The New Country They Have Come To. It Feels Like Permanent Exile To That One Brother Or Wife Who Cannot Stand A Silent Fate In Boston Or London Or Melbourne. I’ve Met Many Who Remain Haunted By The Persistent Ghost Of An Earlier Place.

This Last Night We Tear Into Each Other, As If To Wound, As If To Find The Key To Everything Before Morning.

There Is The Hidden Presence Of Others In Us, Even Those We Have Known Briefly. We Contain Them For The Rest Of Our Lives, At Every Border That We Cross.

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Wernher Von Braun

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