"He sweeps his arm across plates and glasses on a restaurant table so she might look up somewhere else in the city hearing this cause of noise. When he is without her. He, who has never felt alone in the miles of longitude between desert towns...He lies in his room surrounded by the pale maps. He is without her. His hunger wishes to burn down all social rules, all courtesy. Her life with others no longer interests him. He wants only her stalking beauty, her theatre of expressions. He wants the minute and secret reflection between them, the depth of field minimal, their foreignness intimate like two pages of a closed book. He has been disassembled by her..."
- Michael Ondaatje
