Quotes from the Movie The English Patient

My darling, I'm waiting for you ó 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 wantedó to walk in such a place with you, with friends, on earth without maps.

Katharine Clifton

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 ó 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.

David Caravaggio

In Italy, there's always chickens, but no eggs. In Africa there's eggs, but never chickens. Who separated them?

David Caravaggio

Ask him. Ask your saint who he is. Ask him who he's killed.

David Caravaggio

There was a result to what you did!

David Caravaggio

Look. See? Move that ó and no more Bach.

Kirpal Singh

It's still there, the cannon, outside the museum. It was made of metal cups and bowls taken from every household in the city as tax, then melted down. Then later they fired the cannon at my people - comma - The natives - full stop.

Kirpal Singh

What I really object to, Uncle, is your finishing all my condensed milk óand the message everywhere in your book - however slowly I read it - that the best destiny for India is to be ruled by the British.

Kirpal Singh

This is what I do. I do this every day.

Kirpal Singh

Why are you people so threatened by a woman?

Geoffrey Clifton

I'm going to suprise her. It's our anniversary. She's forgotten, of course.

Geoffrey Clifton

In case you're still wondering, This is called a supersternal notch. points to notch at base of throat

Madox

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.

Madox

(?) I apologize if I appear abrupt. I am rusty at social graces.

Madox

(?) There's a war. Where you come from becomes important.

Madox

(?) It's ghastly. It's a witchhunt. Anyone remotely foreign is suddenly a spy.

Madox

(?) We didn't care about countries did we? Brits, Arabs, Hungarians, Germans. None of that mattered, did it? It was something finer than that.

Madox

How do you explainÖ to someone who's never been hereÖ feelings that seem quite wrong.

Man in desert party

How do you know you're not German if you don't remember anything?

British officer