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
Water is the exile, carried back in cans and flasks, the ghost between your hands and your mouth.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote reflects on the relationship humans have with water, illustrating its scarcity and the longing it evokes.
Michael Ondaatje's quote poetically describes water as something precious and elusive, signifying not only its physical need but also the emotional and spiritual yearning it represents. The imagery of water as 'the ghost between your hands and your mouth' suggests that while we may have it in our possession, we still feel a sense of loss and distance from it, highlighting its essential role in life and the challenges of accessing it.
Themes
WaterNatureLifeLongingScarcity
In practice
Example use cases
This quote could be used in a speech about climate change and the importance of conserving water.
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
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.
Michael OndaatjeRead
I have spent weeks in the desert, forgetting to look at the moon, he says, as a married man may spend days never looking into the face of his wife. These are not sins of omission but signs of pre-occuopation.
Michael OndaatjeRead
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