Don't we forgive everything of a lover? We forgive selfishness, desire, guile. As long as we are the motive for it...There are some European words you can never translate properly into another language.
Michael OndaatjeRead
I'll be looking at the moon, but I'll be seeing you.
Interpretation
This quote expresses a deep sense of longing and connection, where the act of observing the moon reminds the speaker of a loved one.
In this quote, Michael Ondaatje eloquently conveys the idea that certain experiences or sights, like looking at the moon, can evoke profound memories and feelings of love for someone who may be physically absent. The moon serves as a symbol of beauty and distance, reflecting how the speaker maintains a connection to that person through shared thoughts and emotions, even in separation.
In practice
In a romantic letter to express how much someone is missed.
Don't we forgive everything of a lover? We forgive selfishness, desire, guile. As long as we are the motive for it...There are some European words you can never translate properly into another language.
When we are young we do not look into mirrors. It is when we are old, concerned with our name, our legend, what our lives will mean to the future. We become vain with the names we own, our claims to have been the first eyes, the strongest army, the cleverest merchant. It is when he is old that Narcissus wants a graven image of himself.
Water is the exile, carried back in cans and flasks, the ghost between your hands and your mouth.
You must talk to me, Caravaggio. Or am I just a book? Something to be read, some creature to be tempted out of a loch and shot full of morphine, full of corridors, lies, loose vegetation, pockets of stones.
You don't want to write your own opinion, you don't want to just represent yourself, but represent yourself through someone else.
A man in a desert can hold absence in his cupped hands, knowing it is something that feeds him more than water.
It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love.
The truly good gaze upon everything with love and understanding.
She had an overwhelming desire to tell him, like the most banal of women. Don't let me go, hold me tight, make me your plaything, your slave, be strong! But they were words she could not say. The only thing she said when he released her from his embrace was, "You don't know how happy I am to be with you." That was the most her reserved nature allowed her to express.
Your name is a golden bell hung in my heart. I would break my body to pieces to call you once by your name.
If you love, you will suffer. The only way to protect yourself against suffering is to protect yourself against love - and that is the greatest suffering of all, loneliness.
His eyes are as green as a fresh pickled toad, His hair is as dark as a blackboard. I wish he was mine, he's really divine, The hero who conquered the Dark Lord.
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