Daniela > Daniela's Quotes

“He smelled the garden, the yellow shield of light smote his eyes, and he whispered, "Life is so beautiful."
...
Yes, he thought, if I can die saying, "Life is so beautiful," then nothing else is important.”
― Mario Puzo, The Godfather

“Death must be so beautiful. To lie in the soft brown earth, with the grasses waving above one's head, and listen to silence. To have no yesterday, and no tomorrow. To forget time, to forgive life, to be at peace.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Canterville Ghost

“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, The English Patient

“Great men are not born great, they grow great . . .”
― Mario Puzo, The Godfather

“A man who doesn't spend time with his family can never be a real man.”
― Mario Puzo, The Godfather

“Friendship is everything. Friendship is more than talent. It is more than the government. It is almost the equal of family.”
― Mario Puzo, The Godfather

“A friend should always underestimate your virtues and an enemy overestimate your faults”
― Mario Puzo, The Godfather

“The lawyer with the briefcase can steal more money than the man with the gun.”
― Mario Puzo, The Godfather

“She had always wanted words, she loved them; grew up on them. Words gave her clarity, brought reason, shape.”
― Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient

“I believe this. When we meet those we fall in love with, there is an aspect of our spirit that is historian, a bit of a pedant who reminisces or remembers a meeting when the other has passed by innocently…but all parts of the body must be ready for the other, all atoms must jump in one direction for desire to occur.”
― Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient

“From this point on, she whispered, we will either find or lose our souls.”
― Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient

“She had grown older. And he loved her more now than he had loved her when he understood her better, when she was the product of her parents. What she was now was what she herself had decided to become.”
― Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient

“Her hand touched me at the wrist. "If I gave you my life, you would drop it. Wouldn't you?"

I didn't say anything.”
― Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient

“I have spent weeks in the desert, forgetting to look at the moon, he says, as a married man may spend days never looking into the face of his wife. These are not sins of omission but signs of pre-occuopation.”
― Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient

“I'll be looking at the moon,
but I'll be seeing you.”
― Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient

“He knows that the only way he can accept losing her is if he can continue to hold her or be held by her. If they can somehow nurse each other out of this. Not with a wall.”
― Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient

“What he would say, he cannot say to this woman whose openness is like a wound, whose youth is not mortal yet. He cannot alter what he loves most in her, her lack of compromise, where the romance of the poems she loves still sits with ease in the real world. Outside these qualities he knows there is no order in the world.”
― Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient

“Don’t we forgive everything of a lover? We forgive selfishness, desire, guile. As long as we are the motive for it.”
― Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient

“Every night I cut out my heart. But in the morning it was full again”
― Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient

“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 my body when I am dead.”
― Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient

“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 Ondaatje, The English Patient

“For echo is the soul of the voice exciting itself in hollow places.”
― Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient

“When a golden girl can win
Prayer from out the lips of sin,
When the barren almond bears,
And a little child gives away its tears,
Then shall all the house be still
And peace come to Canterville.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Canterville Ghost

“Death means you are in the third person.”
― Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient

“Do you understand the sadness of geography?”
― Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient

“In Canada pianos needed water. You opened up the back and left a full glass of water, and a month later the glass would be empty. Her father had told her about the dwarfs who drank only at pianos, never in bars.”
― Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient

“Meanwhile with the help of an anecdote I fell in love. Words caravaggio. They have a power.”
― Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient

“To rest was to receive all aspects of the world without judgement.”
― Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient

“Time erodes gratitude more quickly than it does beauty!”
― Mario Puzo, The Godfather

“As a poet and as a mathematician, he would reason well; as a mere mathematician, he could not have reasoned at all.”
― Edgar Allan Poe, The Purloined Letter