What we make, why it is made, how we draw a dog, who it is we are drawn to, why we cannot forget. Everything is collage. Even genetics. There is the hidden presence of others in us, even those we have known briefly. We contain them for the rest of our lives, at every border that we cross.

- From Divisadero by Michael Ondaatje

…this man beside her is one of the charmed, who has grown up an outsider and so can switch allegiances, can replace loss. There are those destroyed by unfairness and those who are not. If she asks him he will say he has had a good life…In spite of the kindnesses in such people they were a terrible unfairness…whatever the trials around him there was always solution and light. But she saw none. For him there were the various maps of fate, and at Amritsar’s temple all faiths and classes were welcome and ate together.

Her inwardness was a sadness of nature. He himself would allow her to enter any of his thirteen gates of character, but she knew that if he were in danger he would never turn to face her. He would create a space around himself and concentrate.

She did not believe she could turn fully to him and be his lover. He moved at a speed that allowed him to replace loss….The knight. The warrior saint….fato profugus – fate’s fugitive. She guessed that these days began for him with the pleasure of lifting his eyes up to the trees.

- From The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje