A Quote by Michael Ondaatje

We die containing a richness of lovers and tribes, tastes we have swallowed, bodies we have plunged into and swum up as if rivers of wisdom, characters we have climbed into as if trees, fears we have hidden in as if caves. I wish for all this to be marked on by body when I am dead. I believe in such cartography - to be marked by nature, not just to label ourselves on a map like the names of rich men and women on buildings. We are communal histories, communal books. We are not owned or monogamous in our taste or experience.

Michael Ondaatje

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Am Believe Bodies Body Books Buildings Cartography Caves Characters Communal Containing Dead Die Experience Fears Hidden Histories I Believe I Believe In Just Label Like Lovers Map Marked Men Men And Women Names Nature Our Ourselves Owned Rich Richness Rivers Swallowed Taste Tastes Trees Tribes Up Wisdom Wish Women

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Michael Ondaatje
Canadian - Novelist
Born: September 12, 1943

I believe in such cartography – to be marked by nature, not just label ourselves on a map like the names of rich men and women on buildings. We are communal histories, communal books. ... All I desired was to walk upon such an earth that had no maps.

Michael Ondaatje

Probably the institution of marriage had its origin in love of property. Both men and women were united in this--that whatever they loved best, they wished to possess. The usual theory holds that the communal system would not permit the gratification of this desire at the expense of communal rights, and that therefore men were driven to gratify their passion by purchasing or by capturing women from neighboring and hostile tribes.

Henry Adams

Movies began as a communal experience. Even though we now watch them as DVD's, sometimes alone on our computers, mostly in the history of cinema it has been a communal experience.

Alison Owen

I am marked like a road map from head to toe with my repressions. You can travel the length and breadth of my body over superhighways of shame and inhibition and fear.

Philip Roth

Human nature means battling constantly between being completely self-absorbed and trying to be a communal creature. Nature makes you a communal creature. The ultimate single-minded, self-centered creature is a cancer cell. And mostly, we're not made up of cancer cells.

George Lucas

Communism then defines a society in which there are communal forms for dealing with resources. Many communal forms exist where there are not communist governments. The Mondragon cooperatives in Spain and the thousands of worker-owned cooperatives in the United States, are viable alternatives to capitalism.

Cynthia Kauffman

Majorities are of two sorts: (1) communal majority and (2) political majority. A political majority is changeable in its class composition. A political majority grows. A communal majority is born. The admission to a political majority is open. The door to a communal majority is closed. The politics of political majority are free to all to make and unmake. The politics of communal majority are made by its own members born in it.

B. R. Ambedkar

I realized how for all of us who came of age in the late sixties and early seventies the war was a defining experience. You went o r you didn't, but the fact of it and the decisions it forced us to make marked us for the rest of our lives, just as the depression and World War II had marked my parents.

Linda Grant

The first theft marked Buck as fit to survive in the hostile Northland environment. It marked his adaptability, his capacity to adjust himself to changing conditions, the lack of which would have meant swift and terrible death. It marked, further, the decay or going to pieces of his moral nature, a vain thing and a handicap in the ruthless struggle for existence.

Jack London

Not all Muslims wish to express themselves in public through a communal religious identity. Identities are multiple, and some may wish to speak instead just as citizens in their professional capacity, through their political party, or their neighborhood body.

Maajid Nawaz

Experience is the best teacher. But in our day and time, what we need is wisdom, because wisdom overcomes experience, because experience is wisdom, but there's a level of wisdom that overcomes the experience, and that's the experience that's already lived by others. I'm not trying to repeat the histories. I already learned from what they did.

Rza

We don't believe in splitting the experience. We don't believe in taking a row out and putting in motion seats [that shake and move in response to cues from a film]. If you walk into that auditorium you're going to have a communal experience.

Gerry Lopez

If we are marked to die, we are enough to do our country loss; and if to live, the fewer men, the greater share of honor.

William Shakespeare

To the men and women who own men and women those of us meant to be lovers we will not pardon you for wasting our bodies and time

Leonard Cohen

We need to go back to our relationship with nature and understand that those trees are our lungs. The earth is recycling as our body. The rivers are our circulation. This air is our breath. And the star stuff, the carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen that comes from distant galaxies is actually the molecules of your body.

Deepak Chopra

I am often asked why men don't get as worked up as they might about women - particularly poor women - having to use their bodies as prostitutes. Because most men unconsciously experience themselves as prostitutes every day - the miner, the firefighter, the construction worker, the logger, the soldier, the meatpacker - these men are prostitutes in the direct sense: they sacrifice their bodies for money and for their families.

Warren Farrell

A Quote by Michael Ondaatje

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