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The English Patient

The English Patient quotes

81 total quotes

Count Laszlo de Almásy
David Caravaggio
Geoffrey Clifton
Hana
Katharine Clifton
Kirpal Singh (Kip)
Madox
Other




View Quote The neck of K can never [be something] not in my mind. and K's clothes always at ease on her. Does he notice? What is the significance of Betrayal? Does K bother with a moral Labyrinth - K's debate - does she debate? [reading from notes she found in Almásy's book]
View Quote Almásy: This... this, the hollow at the base of a woman's throat, does it have an official name?
Madox: Good God, man, pull yourself together.
View Quote My darling, I'm waiting for you — how long is a day in the dark, or a week? The fire is gone now, and I'm horribly cold. I really ought to drag myself outside but then there would be the sun. . . I'm afraid I waste the light on the paintings and on writing these words. We die, we die rich with lovers and tribes, tastes we have swallowed, bodies we have entered and swum up like rivers, fears we have hidden in, like this wretched cave. We are the real countries, not the boundaries drawn on maps with the names of powerful men. I know you will come and carry me out into the palace of winds. That's all I've wanted— to walk in such a place with you, with friends, on earth without maps. [written in journal]
View Quote Almásy: When were you most happy?
Katharine: Now.
Almásy: When were you least happy?
Katharine: Now.
Almásy: What do you love?
Katharine: What do I love?
Almásy: Say everything.
Katharine: Water—fish in it—and hedgehogs—I love hedgehogs. Marmite—I'm addicted, and baths, but not with other people! Islands—and your handwriting. I could go on all day.
Almásy: Go on all day.
Katharine: My husband.
Almásy: And what do you hate most?
Katharine: A lie. And what do you hate most?
Almásy: Ownership—or being owned. When you leave, you should forget me.
View Quote Almásy: There is no God... but I hope someone looks after you.
Madox: Just in case you're interested, it's called the suprasternal notch. Come and visit us in Dorset when all this nonsense is over. [Heads away but turns back]
Madox: You'll never come to Dorset.
View Quote Almásy: You're wearing the thimble.
Katharine: Of course. You idiot. I always wear it. I've always worn it. I've always loved you.
View Quote Caravaggio: You get to the morning and the poison leaks away, doesn't it? Black nights. I thought I would kill you.
Almásy: You can't kill me. I died years ago.
Caravaggio: No, I can't kill you now.
View Quote Almásy: I just wanted you to know— I'm not missing you yet.
Katharine: You will...you will.
View Quote (?) I apologize if I appear abrupt. I am rusty at social graces.
View Quote Almásy: There's also a plant - I've never seen it but I'm told you can cut a piece the size of a heart from this plant and the next day it will be filled with a delicious liquid.
Katharine: Find that plant. Cut out its heart.
View Quote Almásy: Szerelem means love. And the story, well, there's this Hungarian count. He's a wanderer. He's a fool. And for years he's on some kind of a quest for... who knows what. And then one day, he falls under the spell of a mysterious English woman. A harpy, who beats him, and hits him, he he becomes her slave, and he sews her clothes, and worships—Stop it! Stop it! You're always beating me!
Katharine: Bastard! You bastard, I believed you! You should be my slave.
View Quote Dec. 22nd [1938] — Betrayals during war are childlike compared with our betrayals during peace. New lovers are nervous and tender, but smash everything. For the heart is an organ of fire. For the heart is an organ of fire— I love that. I believe that. [Reading Almásy's note on the Christmas firecracker]
View Quote (?) We didn't care about countries did we? Brits, Arabs, Hungarians, Germans. None of that mattered, did it? It was something finer than that.
View Quote Hana: Then I tell myself he spends all day searching, in the night he wants to be found.
Kip: I do. I do want you to find me! I do want to be found.
View Quote Katharine: Geoffrey's not in Cairo. He's not actually a buffoon. The plane wasn't a wedding present. It belongs to the British Government. They want aerial maps of the whole of North Africa. So I think he's in Ethiopia. In case you were counting on his sudden appearance.
Almásy: And the marriage. . . is that a fiction?
Katharine: No, the marriage isn't a fiction.