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
It doubles your perception, to write from the point of view of someone you're not.
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
All quotes βWhen 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
It's very important that when you have a designer like Marc Jacobs, who is a genius, you give him complete freedom.
Bernard ArnaultRead
Our easiest approach to a definition of any aspect of fiction is always by considering the sort of demand it makes on the reader. Curiosity for the story, human feelings and a sense of value for the characters, intelligence and memory for the plot. What does fantasy ask of us? It asks us to pay something extra.
E. M. ForsterRead
All art is an abstraction to some degree.
Henry MooreRead
Make the verses flow together. If a following verse has nothing to do with the previous, you may lose our listener/reader. You want a smooth flow to hear or read, and it's easier to memorize.
Margaret AtwoodRead
It is a peculiar part of the good photographer's adventure to know where luck is most likely to lie in the stream, to hook it, and to bring it in without unfair play and without too much subduing it.
James AgeeRead
Beautiful forms and compositions are not made by chance, nor can they ever, in any material, be made at small expense. A composition for cheapness and not excellence of workmanship is the most frequent and certain cause of the rapid decay and entire destruction of arts and manufacturers.
Josiah WedgwoodRead