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
She had grown older. And he loved her more now than he had loved her when he understood her better, when she was the product of her parents. What she was now was what she herself had decided to become.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote highlights the deepening love that comes with understanding and personal growth over time.
In this quote, Michael Ondaatje reflects on how love can evolve as a person matures and becomes more authentic. He emphasizes that true love transcends the initial understanding of someone's background and instead flourishes as one appreciates their journey and choices, embracing their individuality and the person they have grown into.
Themes
LoveGrowthUnderstandingIndividualityMaturity
In practice
Example use cases
In a wedding speech to convey the beauty of long-lasting love.
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
I will write in words of fire. I will write them on your skin. I will write about desire. Write beginnings, write of sin. You’re the book I love the best, your skin only holds my truth, you will be a palimpsest lines of age rewriting youth. You will not burn upon the pyre. Or be buried on the shelf. You’re my letter to desire: And you’ll never read yourself. I will trace each word and comma As the final dusk descends, You’re my tale of dreams and drama, Let us find out how it ends.
Neil GaimanRead
Love and work... work and love, that's all there is.
Sigmund FreudRead
What I've found is that the religion that matters, the real religion is love.
Muhammad AliRead
Let not your love become attachment, nor your hate become destruction.
UmarRead
It was as if the empty nights were made for thinking of him. And sometimes I found myself so vividly aware of him it was as if he had only just left the room and the ring of his voice were still there. And somehow, there was a disturbing comfort in that, and, despite myself, I’d envision his face.
Anne RiceRead
Daddy taught us through his philosophy of nonviolence, which placed love at the centerpiece, that through that love we can turn enemies into friends. Through that love, we can create more dignified atmospheres.
Bernice KingRead