"It's a responsibility of the writer to get the reader out of the story somehow"
About this Quote
The phrasing matters. “Responsibility” frames this as more than technique. It hints at a moral dimension: if a story can seduce, it can also anesthetize. An author who never releases the reader risks turning narrative into a kind of soft captivity, where pleasure substitutes for thought. “Somehow” keeps it open-ended, a nod to Ondaatje’s own aesthetic - lyrical, collage-like, suspicious of tidy closure. The method could be formal (a structural jolt, a gap, an unresolved thread), or tonal (a moment of plainness after beauty), or thematic (a scene that quietly demands you reckon with history, violence, intimacy).
Contextually, Ondaatje’s work often lives in the overlap of personal memory and public catastrophe. He knows that storytelling can make trauma “legible” while also smoothing its edges. This maxim is a reminder: the point isn’t just to enter the dream. It’s to wake up carrying something that won’t let you go back to sleep.
Quote Details
| Topic | Writing |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Ondaatje, Michael. (2026, January 16). It's a responsibility of the writer to get the reader out of the story somehow. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/its-a-responsibility-of-the-writer-to-get-the-99786/
Chicago Style
Ondaatje, Michael. "It's a responsibility of the writer to get the reader out of the story somehow." FixQuotes. January 16, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/its-a-responsibility-of-the-writer-to-get-the-99786/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"It's a responsibility of the writer to get the reader out of the story somehow." FixQuotes, 16 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/its-a-responsibility-of-the-writer-to-get-the-99786/. Accessed 6 Feb. 2026.
