A Quote by Michael Ondaatje

There's a lot of thievery involved in writing. You're breaking into other people's spaces and other people's stories.

Michael Ondaatje

Quote Topics

Breaking Involved Lot Other People Spaces Stories Thievery Writing

Quote Author

Michael Ondaatje
Canadian - Novelist
Born: September 12, 1943

Writing stories, adopting other characters, making up fantastic stories and tales, this is a way of perhaps enhancing who I am. Writing stories takes a commonplace old life and makes it all somehow more interesting. And hopefully I can do that in a way that touches a lot of people in their lives, too.

David Small

What writers do is they tell their own story constantly through other people's stories. They imagine other people, and those other people are carrying the burden of their struggles, their questions about themselves.

Tobias Wolff

I want to remind people of the great and profound joy that can be found in stories, and that stories can connect us to each other, and that reading together changes everybody involved.

Kate DiCamillo

I assume the risk of allowing my fiction to enter other people's true stories. And to be fair, I let other people's stories trespass the truth of mine.

John Edgar Wideman

In my twenties, it was so important for me to show people I had all these other books and these other sorts of writing in me, .. A lot of authors, if their first book is a success, they're terrified to write a second one. But in my case, since the first book wasn't considered a literary book, I was really determined to show people I could do other types of writing.

Evelyn Lau

Examining other people's motivations, other people's language and other people's way of interacting is much more fascinating to me than spending a lot of time worrying about my own. I've said, 'What other people think of me is none of my business.'

Beth Broderick

I love music. In a lot of my downtime, I spend time listening to other people's music or other people's rhymes and writing my own.

Damian Lillard

As long as the people who kinda wanna go kill other people are going to go kill other people who kinda wanna go kill other people, you're killing all the right people and opening up all the best parking spaces.

Doug Stanhope

Right now we have millions of people in our country who are suffering in isolation, thinking that they are the only ones who are dealing with drug addiction, who don't realize that on their own block there are other people and families. They think they're alone and they think they're going to be judged and they don't want to talk about it. But when people do come forward and share their stories it's incredibly liberating, and it gives other people permission to tell their stories too.

Vivek Murthy

As a television producer, you do a lot of writing - drafting proposals for pilot shows and other things, so yes, a good deal of writing was involved.

Simon Toyne

My writing has to excite people and depict or include their experiences. That's part of my process - to go out and interact with people. It's very much like an archival process. I understand that the Brothers Grimm would go out and get people talking so they could document folk tales that weren't being documented any other way. I try to offer a little bit of myself - some experience from my life that evokes stories in other people.

Chuck Palahniuk

As an activist, you do find yourself directed more toward public action. But I've always tried to use stories from my own life in my writing for instance. It has always been clear to me that the stories of each other's lives are our best textbooks. Every social justice movement that I know of has come out of people sitting in small groups, telling their life stories, and discovering that other people have shared similar experiences. So, if we've shared many experiences, then it probably has something to do with power or politics, and if we unify and act together, then we can make a change.

Gloria Steinem

I've done a lot of writing for other people, other projects, and what I tried to do with the music I'm putting out for myself is kind of keep it where I'm doing everything.

Teddy Geiger

When people are rude to other people. When people belittle other people. Bullies really bother me a lot. A lot, a lot.

Chris Zylka

We're all just in the muck trying to believe we're capable of greatness, but closer to breaking than we want to admit. And we tell ourselves stories-about ourselves,but maybe also all these stories about other people, about characters-as a way to hide from how small we are.