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It doubles your perception, to write from the point of view of someone you're not.
Michael Ondaatje
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Interpretation

What this quote means

Writing from another's perspective enhances your understanding and empathy.

This quote emphasizes the power of writing as a means of exploring different perspectives and experiences. When an author adopts a point of view that is not their own, it can lead to a deeper understanding of diverse lives and feelings, ultimately broadening their own perception and empathy towards others.

Themes

PerspectiveEmpathyWritingUnderstandingCreativity

In practice

Example use cases

In a creative writing workshop, to encourage students to explore different narratives.

More from Michael Ondaatje

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.
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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.
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Water is the exile, carried back in cans and flasks, the ghost between your hands and your mouth.
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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.
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You don't want to write your own opinion, you don't want to just represent yourself, but represent yourself through someone else.
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A man in a desert can hold absence in his cupped hands, knowing it is something that feeds him more than water.
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