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The English Patient

Book by Michael Ondaatje · 50 quotes · Love, Desert, Hands

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The English Patient Quotes

“He walked out of the hospital into the sun, into open air for the first time in months, out of the green-lit rooms that lay like glass in his mind. He stood there breathing everything in, the hurry of everyone. First, he thought, I need shoes with rubber on the bottom. I need gelato.”

NeedsMindFirstsRoomsSunAirFoodMonthsFirst TimeGreenCookingLaysBottomShoesGlassesBreathingCulinaryHospitalsLitRubberGelato
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“What he would say, he cannot say to this woman whose openness is like a wound, whose youth is not mortal yet. He cannot alter what he loves most in her, her lack of compromise, where the romance of the poems she loves still sits with ease in the real world. Outside these qualities he knows there is no order in the world.”

KnowsWorldStillsRealRomanceOrderQualityYouthWoundsCompromiseMortalsEaseOpennessReal World
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“When we are young we do not look into mirrors. It is when we are old, concerned with our name, our legend, what our lives will mean to the future. We become vain with the names we own, our claims to have been the first eyes, the strongest army, the cleverest merchant. It is when he is old that Narcissus wants a graven image of himself.”

WantFirstsLooksMeanHas BeensEyeYoungNamesOur LivesConcernedClaimsArmyMirrorsVainStrongestLegendsMerchantsNarcissus
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“Her father had taught her about hands. About a dog's paws. Whenever her father was alone with a dog in a house he would lean over and smell the skin at the base of its paw. This, he would say, as if coming away from a brandy snifter, is the greatest smell in the world! A bouquet! Great rumours of travel! She would pretend disgust, but the dog's paw was a wonder: the smell of it never suggested dirt. It's a cathedral! her father had said, so-and-so's garden, that field of grasses, a walk through cyclamen--a concentration of hints of all the paths the animal had taken during the day.”

IfsWorldSaidHandsFatherHouseWalksAnimalWonderPathTakenDogFieldsTaughtGardenSkinsSmellGrassConcentrationDisgustingDirtHintsCathedralsPawsRumoursBouquetsBrandy
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“Women want everything of a lover. And too often I would sink below the surface. So armies disappear under sand. And there was her fear of her husband, her belief in her honour, my old desire for self-sufficiency, my disappearances, her suspicions of me, my disbelief that she loved me. The paranoia and claustrophobia of hidden love.”

WantSelfDesireBeliefLoversHusbandArmySurfaceDisappearSandHonourSuspicionDisbeliefParanoiaWomen WantDisappearanceSelf SufficiencySufficiencyBelow The SurfaceClaustrophobia
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“Read him slowly, dear girl, you must read Kipling slowly. Watch carefully where the commas fall so you can discover the natural pauses. He is a writer who used pen and ink. He looked up from the page a lot, I believe, stared through his window and listened to birds, as most writers who are alone do. Some do not know the names of birds, though he did. Your eye is too quick and North American. Think about the speed of his pen. What an appalling, barnacled old first paragraph it is otherwise.”

ThinkingKnowsFirstsBelieveEyeUsedFallGirlNamesI BelieveNaturalWatchesPagesBirdWindowDearSpeedPensPausesInkParagraphKipling
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“Between the kitchen and the destroyed chapel a door led into an oval-shaped library. The space inside seemed safe except for a large hole at portrait level in the far wall, caused by mortar-shell attack on the villa two months earlier. The rest of the room had adapted itself to this wound, accepting the habits of weather, evening stars, the sound of birds.”

TwoStarsSoundSpaceLevelsRoomsAcceptingDoorsWallMonthsHabitSafeBirdLibraryWoundsHolesWeatherDestroyedEveningKitchenShellsPortraitsAdaptedTwo MonthsChapelOvalMortarVilla
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“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...”

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