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
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.
Interpretation
Writing novels involves an internal dialogue, where the author debates ideas through their characters.
Michael Ondaatje highlights the creative process of writing novels as a form of self-exploration and debate. Through the act of creating characters, authors can engage in discussions with themselves about complex themes and ideas, allowing for personal reflection and deeper understanding.
In practice
In a writing workshop, when discussing character development, you can use this quote to illustrate the purpose of creating characters as a means of exploring ideas.
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.
When you write, you want to get rid of the world, don’t you? Of course you do. When you’re writing, you’re creating your own worlds.
The fantasy that appeals most to people is the kind that's rooted thoroughly in somebody looking around a corner and thinking, 'What if I wandered into this writer's people here?' If you've done your job and made your people and your settings well enough, that adds an extra dimension that you can't buy.
We've been fighting our whole lives to say we're just human beings like everyone else. When we start separating ourselves in our work, that doesn't help the cause. I've heard it for years: 'How do you feel being a black filmmaker?' I'm not a black filmmaker, I'm a filmmaker. I'm a black man, I have black children. But I'm just a filmmaker.
I saw a sunset in Queretaro that seemed to reflect the color of a rose in Bengal.
Savages and modern artists are alike strangely driven to create something uglier than themselves. but the artists find it harder.
I've always had an idealistic streak about storytelling in that I believe we owe more to audiences than repeatedly bludgeoning them over the head while stealing their lunch money. We owe them inspiration. That's why I'm more interested now in creating new heroes than hooking up jumper cables to old ones.
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