Michael Ondaatje

In the enormous silence of the snow, the young German woman walked forcefully but monotonously to and fro.

She enters the story knowing she will emerge from it feeling she has been immersed in the lives of others, in plots that stretch back twenty years, her body full of sentences and moments.

I believe in such cartography – to be marked by nature, not just label ourselves on a map like the names of rich men and women on buildings. We are communal histories, communal books.

You must behave as if it were a normal world.

Every bomb is a kind of agreement.

We are communal histories, communal books. We are not afraid of joining the others. We are not afraid of death.

The desert could not be claimed or owned–it was a piece of cloth carried by winds, never held down by stones, and given a hundred shifting names.

She laughed, turning his collar around in her hands. She had learned how to act from silent movies made before she was born, gestures of anxious love that she parceled out, a cup of water a day to the true love.

I wanted to come back to the desert again and again, as if never leaving it meant forgetting nothing more about myself.

They are bits of my life and me on yellowing pages.

I have always loved the desert. One sits down on a desert sand dune, sees nothing, hears nothing. Yet through the silence, something throbs and gleams.

I believe in such cartography – to be marked by nature, not just label ourselves on a map like the names of rich men and women on buildings.