The English Patient quotes

View Quote My God… they're swimming. Swimming. [to himself in Cave of Swimmers]

View Quote Am I a terrible coward to ask how much water we have? [to Almásy]

View Quote I can still taste you. I try to write with your taste in my mouth. [to Katharine]

View Quote Let me tell you about winds. [to Katharine]

View Quote The International Sand Club: misfits, buggers, fascists, and fools— God bless us every one. Ooops! mustn't say international — dirty word, filthy word.

View Quote Man in desert party: (verify) How do you explain… to someone who's never been here… feelings that seem quite wrong.
British officer: (verify) How do you know you're not German if you don't remember anything?

View Quote Muller: [interrogating Caravaggio] Look here, for every name you give me, I'll let you keep a finger. You give me something, and you'll keep something.
Caravaggio: Don't cut me.
Muller: Are thumbs fingers? [to Lieutenant]
Muller: Ist ein Daumen ein Finger?
Interrogation Room Soldier: [phone rings] Telefon.
Muller: I'm sick of this room. I'm sick of this heat! And I'm sick of this damn telephone!
[hangs it up]

View Quote Thousands of people did die. Just different people. [to Caravaggio]

View Quote In a few minutes there'll be no stars— the air is filling with sand. [to Katharine]

View Quote So. I come across the hospital convoy, I'm looking for this stuff. This nurse, Mary, tells me about you and Hana, hiding in some monastery, in what you call it — retreat - how you'd come in from the desert and you were burned and you didn't remember your name, but you knew the words to every song that ever was and you had one possession - a copy of w:Herodotus and it was filled with letters and cuttings, and then I know it was you. . . I'd seen you writing in that book. At the embassy in Cairo, when I had thumbs, and you had a face. And a name. [to Almásy]

View Quote Condensed milk - one of the truly great inventions. [to Hana]

View Quote I think I was a pilot.

View Quote K at dawn — silhouetted.

View Quote Could I ask you, please, to paste you paintings into my book? I should like to have them. I *should be honored. [to Katharine]

View Quote I have to teach myself not to read too much into everything. It comes from too long having to read so much into hardly anything at all.