Sometimes he leaves a book in this corner. He has already smelled the pages, touched the print’s indentations. Now he can devour it like a loaf of bread with his bare hands.
— Michael Ondaatje, In the Skin of A Lion
He came to this country like a torch on fire and he swallowed air as he walked forward and he gave out light.
— Michael Ondaatje, In the Skin of a Lion
He walks back into the bright kitchen and moves from window to window to search out the moths pinioned against the screens, clinging to brightness. From across the fields they will have seen this one lighted room and traveled towards it. A summer night’s inquiry. …
Do they return nightly to show him something? Or does he haunt them? In the way he steps from the dark house and at the doorway of the glowing kitchen says to the empty fields, I am here. Come and visit me.
— Michael Ondaatje, In the Skin of a Lion
Before the real city could be seen it had to be imagined, the way rumours and tall tales were a kind of charting.
— Michael Ondaatje, In the Skin of a Lion
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