A Quote by Michael Ondaatje

One of the things that happens in novels it's almost like a continual debate with yourself. That's why you're writing the book. It's why you create characters: so you can argue with yourself.

Michael Ondaatje

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Michael Ondaatje
Canadian - Novelist
Born: September 12, 1943

It's why you create characters: so you can argue with yourself.

Michael Ondaatje

Finding yourself in a hole, at the bottom of a hole, in almost total solitude, and discovering that only writing can save you. To be without the slightest subject for a book, the slightest idea for a book, is to find yourself, once again, before a book. A vast emptiness. A possible book. Before nothing. Before something like living, naked writing, like something terrible, terrible to overcome.

Marguerite Duras

People come, people go – they’ll drift in and out of your life, almost like characters in a favorite book. When you finally close the cover, the characters have told their story and you start up again with another book, complete with new characters and adventures. Then you find yourself focusing on the new ones, not the ones from the past.

Nicholas Sparks

When they give you things, ask yourself why. When you're grateful to them for giving you the things you should have anyway, ask yourself why.

Jeff Vandermeer

You think there's a rule book, in a way, until you realize there's absolutely no rule book, and you can use a red carpet to express something about yourself. There are so many wonderful designers in the world, and they create such wonderful things. Why go with something uninteresting?

Elizabeth Debicki

Why are you doing this to yourself? When something bad happens, why do you have to pick at it until it bleeds all over again?

Jodi Picoult

When things happen - you ask yourself why today, why not tomorrow, why not yesterday? That's the most amazing thing about time.

Ozwald Boateng

writing is about doing something very close to the bone. It's about shocking yourself. When I write, I like to make myself cry, laugh - I like to give myself an experience. I see a lot of writing out there that's very safe. But if you're not scaring yourself, why would you think that you'd be scaring anybody else? If you're not coming to a revelation about your place in the universe, why would you think anyone else would?

Kate Braverman

As an actor you use your imagination to put yourself in the shoes of bad guy characters. You create a story as to why you are doing it. You are finding what drives people to do this.

David Dayan Fisher

There are two questions that you ask yourself as a writer, and one of them is, 'But why?' The question that takes the book forward is, 'What if? What if x y or z happened? How would those characters react?'

Penny Jordan

Why do you work so hard to make yourself disliked? I should think you'd find it happens enough on its own without putting yourself to any extra trouble.

Steven Brust

For true success ask yourself these four questions: Why? Why not? Why not me? Why not now?

James Allen

I want to create a collection, almost like a trilogy of sorts. Whereas 'Milk and Honey' was very much like holding a mirror up to yourself, the second book is turning that mirror around and fixing it on the world. The book is a reflection of the times we are in.

Rupi Kaur

Movies are not novels, and that's why, when filmmakers try to adapt novels, particularly long or complex novels, the result is almost always failure. It can't be done.

Paul Auster

Why argue about decisions you're not powerful enough to make yourself?

John Houseman

I think if you are truly convinced of why you're writing something, if it's a strong enough dream of yours to share this vision and see it realized, you can almost always find a way motivate yourself, to keep going back to the drawing board and trying new things and approaches.

Diane Drake

A Quote by Michael Ondaatje

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