Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient Quotes
Every night I cut out my heart. But in the morning it was full again
Nowadays he doesn't think of his wife, though he knows he can turn around and evoke every move of her, describe any aspect of her, the weigh of her wrist on his heart during the night.
This was the time in her life that she fell upon books as the only door out of her cell. They became half her world.
He knows that the only way he can accept losing her is if he can continue to hold her or be held by her. If they can somehow nurse each other out of this. Not with a wall.
I am not in love with him, I am in love with ghosts. So is he, he's in love with ghosts.
Because we want to know things, how the pieces fit. Talkers seduce, words direct us into corners. We want more than anything to grow and change. Brave new world.
Everything that ever happened to me that was important happened in the desert.
I was a man fifteen years older than she, you understand. I had reached that stage in life where I identified with cynical villains in a book.
He refused to believe in his own weaknesses, and with her he had not found a weakness to fit himself against.
I went mad before he did, you killed everything in me. Kiss me, will you. Stop defending yourself.
-I think you are inhuman. If I leave you, who will you go to? Would you find another lover?I said nothing.-Deny it, damn you!
I once traveled with a guide who was taking me to Faya. He didn't speak for nine hours. At the end of it he pointed to the horizon and said, 'Faya!' That was a good day.
The Englishman left months ago, Hana, he's with the Bedouin or in some English garden with its phlox and shit.
She had always wanted words, she loved them, grew up on them. Words gave her clarity, brought reason, shape. Whereas I thought words bent emotions like sticks in water.
