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
Women want everything of a lover. And too often I would sink below the surface. So armies disappear under sand. And there was her fear of her husband, her belief in her honour, my old desire for self-sufficiency, my disappearances, her suspicions of me, my disbelief that she loved me. The paranoia and claustrophobia of hidden love.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects the complexity and fears present in intimate relationships, highlighting desires, doubts, and the struggles of love.
In this quote, Michael Ondaatje explores the tumultuous emotions that arise in romantic relationships, particularly the fears and insecurities related to love and trust. The imagery of armies disappearing under sand symbolizes the feelings of disappearing or being overwhelmed under pressures of love, while also touching on themes of suspicion, self-sufficiency, and the inner conflicts that partners may experience when navigating their feelings for one another. This reflection on the paradoxes of love underscores the weight of expectations and the crumbling foundations that often accompany the pursuit of deep connections.
Themes
LoveRelationshipsFearTrustEmotionsComplexity
In practice
Example use cases
Sharing this quote in a discussion about the intricacies of love in a relationship class.
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
Don't tell me that [broken heartstrings] hurt less than a broken bone, that an ingrown life is something surgeons can cut away, that there's no way for it to metastasize - it does.
Shane KoyczanRead
American high school culture was impenetrable to me, and very cliquey: you had the Hispanics, the African Americans, the surfer guys and the goths and the immigrants. The jocks and the surfers got the girls. By the time I'd got to grips with it, I'd graduated.
Khaled HosseiniRead
I got along without you before I met you and I'll get along without you a long time after you're gone.
Willie NelsonRead
The hatred of those who are near to us is most violent.
TacitusRead
To me, "sexual freedom" means freedom from having to have sex.
Lily TomlinRead
Manners are like primary colors, there are certain rules and once you have these you merely mix, i.e., adapt, them to meet changing situations.
Emily PostRead