Quotes from book
The English Patient

The English Patient

Michael Ondaatje

The English Patient is a 1992 novel by Michael Ondaatje. The book follows four dissimilar people brought together at an Italian villa during the Italian Campaign of World War II. The four main characters are: an unrecognisably burned man — the eponymous patient, presumed to be English; his Canadian Army nurse, a Sikh British Army sapper, and a Canadian thief. The story occurs during the North African Campaign and centres on the incremental revelations of the patient's actions prior to his injuries, and the emotional effects of these revelations on the other characters. The book won the 1992 Booker Prize, the 2018 Golden Man Booker, and the Governor General's Award.

“A postcard. Neat handwriting fills the rectangle.

Half my days I cannot bear to touch you.
The rest of my time I feel like it doesn’t matter if I will ever see you again. It isn’t the morality, it’s how much you can bear.

No date. No name attached.”

Michael Ondaatje book The English Patient

Source: The English Patient

“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 Patient

Source: The English Patient

“Every night I cut out my heart. But in the morning it was full again”

Michael Ondaatje book The English Patient

Source: The English Patient

“The trouble with all of us is we are where we shouldn't be.”

Michael Ondaatje book The English Patient

Source: The English Patient

“All I ever wanted was a world without maps.”

Michael Ondaatje book The English Patient

Source: The English Patient

“From this point on, she whispered, we will either find or lose our souls.”

Michael Ondaatje book The English Patient

Source: The English Patient

“Death means you are in the third person.”

Michael Ondaatje book The English Patient

Source: 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 Patient

Source: 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 Patient

Source: 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 Patient

Source: The English Patient

“All I desired was to walk upon such an earth that had no maps.”

Michael Ondaatje book The English Patient

Source: The English Patient

“I believe in such cartography – to be marked by nature, not just label ourselves on a map like the names of rich men and women on buildings. We are communal histories, communal books…. All I desired was to walk upon such an earth that had no maps.”

Michael Ondaatje book The English Patient

Source: 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 Patient

Source: The English Patient

“Men had always been the reciters of poetry in the desert.”

Michael Ondaatje book The English Patient

Source: The English Patient

“For echo is the soul of the voice exciting itself in hollow places.”

Michael Ondaatje book The English Patient

Source: The English Patient

“Do you understand the sadness of geography?”

Michael Ondaatje book The English Patient

Source: The English Patient

“I'll be looking at the moon,
but I'll be seeing you.”

Michael Ondaatje book The English Patient

Source: The English Patient

“Don’t we forgive everything of a lover? We forgive selfishness, desire, guile. As long as we are the motive for it.”

Michael Ondaatje book The English Patient

Source: The English Patient

“I am not in love with him, I am in love with ghosts. So is he, he's in love with ghosts.”

Michael Ondaatje book The English Patient

Source: 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 Patient

Source: The English Patient

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