Michael Ondaatje is well known for The English Patient. His most recent book is Warlight. Set primarily in coastal England during World War II, Warlight immerses the reader in the life of foreign spy service through the eyes of the son left behind. We find him later trying to make sense of it all, a thoughtfully woven journey of self discovery.
Page 139: She was organized, ardently neat, whereas he was the rabbit's wild brother, leaving what looked like the path of an undressing hurricane wherever he went.
Page 217: Everyone has their own marriages, she thinks.
Page 232-3: What would it be like for him, she wondered, to leave her after this? Would it be like one of his historical anecdotes, where a small army departed a Carolingian border town with courtesy and silence, or would everything around them clatter with repercussions?
Page 275: If a wound is great you cannot turn it into something that is spoken, it can barely be written.
Page 284: We order our lives with barely held stories.
