“She had grown older. And he loved her more now than he had loved her when he understood her better, when she was the product of her parents. What she was now was what she herself had decided to become.”Michael Ondaatje book The English PatientSource: The English Patient
“She had always wanted words, she loved them; grew up on them. Words gave her clarity, brought reason, shape.”Michael Ondaatje book The English PatientSource: The English Patient
“Her life with others no longer interests him. He wants only her stalking beauty, her theatre of expressions. He wants the minute secret reflection between them, the depth of field minimal, their foreignness intimate like two pages of a closed book.”Michael Ondaatje book The English PatientSource: The English Patient
“Her hand touched me at the wrist. "If I gave you my life, you would drop it. Wouldn't you?"I didn't say anything.”Michael Ondaatje book The English PatientSource: The English Patient
“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.”Michael Ondaatje book The English PatientSource: The English Patient
“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.”Michael Ondaatje book The English PatientSource: The English Patient
“He has been disassembled by her. And if she has brought him to this, what has he brought her to?”Michael Ondaatje book The English PatientSource: The English Patient
“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.”Michael Ondaatje book The English PatientSource: The English Patient
“You built your walls too, she tells him. So I have my wall. She says it glittering in a beauty he cannot stand. She with her beautiful clothes with her pale face that laughs at everyone who smiles at her…”Michael Ondaatje book The English PatientSource: The English Patient
“Could you fall in love with her if she wasn't smarter than you? I mean, she may not be smarter than you. But isn't it important for you to think she is smarter than you in order to fall in love? Think now.”Michael Ondaatje book The English PatientSource: The English Patient
“If she were a writer she would collect her pencils and notebooks and favourite cat and write in bed. Strangers and lovers would never get past the locked door.”Michael Ondaatje book The English PatientSource: The English Patient