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
A man in a desert can hold absence in his cupped hands knowing it is something more than water. There is a plant whose heart, if one cuts it out is replaced with fluid containing herbal goodness. Every morning one can drink the liquid amount of the missing heart.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects the idea that absence can have value and that what is lost can still provide nourishment and sustenance in unexpected ways.
This quote by Michael Ondaatje explores the profound relationship between absence and presence, highlighting that even in scarcity, there is potential for richness. The imagery of a man in a desert illustrates a stark reality where one learns to appreciate what is not overtly present, suggesting that absence can symbolize deeper meaning and emotional nourishment. It also alludes to the resilience of nature, represented by the healing properties of the plant, emphasizing the idea that even from loss, one can find sustenance and growth.
Themes
AbsenceNourishmentValueResilienceGrowth
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used to inspire someone who is going through a tough time, reminding them that their losses can lead to personal growth.
More from Michael Ondaatje
All quotes →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.
Michael OndaatjeRead
Water is the exile, carried back in cans and flasks, the ghost between your hands and your mouth.
Michael OndaatjeRead
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.
Michael OndaatjeRead
You don't want to write your own opinion, you don't want to just represent yourself, but represent yourself through someone else.
Michael OndaatjeRead
A man in a desert can hold absence in his cupped hands, knowing it is something that feeds him more than water.
Michael OndaatjeRead
Similar quotes
The great thing about being the only species that makes a distinction between right and wrong is that we can make up the rules for ourselves as we go along.
Douglas AdamsRead
Meditate upon the Om that is in the heart.
Swami VivekanandaRead
Even if you walk exactly the same route each time - as with a sonnet - the events along the route cannot be imagined to be the same from day to day, as the poet's health, sight, his anticipations, moods, fears, thoughts cannot be the same.
A. R. AmmonsRead
I hope for nothing. I fear nothing. I am free.
Nikos KazantzakisRead
I dream that I have found us both again, With spring so many strangers' lives away, And we, so free, Out walking by the sea, With someone else's paper words to say.... They took us at the gates of green return, Too lost by then to stop, and ask them why- Do children meet again? Does any trace remain, Along the superhighways of July?
Thomas PynchonRead
The two aims of the Party are to conquer the whole surface of the earth and to extinguish once and for all the possibility of independent thought. There are therefore two great problems which the Party is concerned to solve. One is how to discover, against his will, what another human being is thinking, and the other is how to kill several hundred million people in a few seconds without giving warning beforehand.
George OrwellRead