All Quotes

"[to Hana] I long for the rain on my face."

"[to Katherine] I'm not agreeing. Don't think I'm agreeing, because I'm not."

"[upon seeing Katherine in the plane wreckage] Katherine? My God, Katherine what are you doing here?"

"[to Caravaggio] Thousands of people did die. Just different people."

"[to Caravaggio] No...I was never a spy. [to Caravaggio]"

"The International Sand Club: misfits, buggers, fascists, and fools - God bless us every one. Oops! mustn't say international - dirty word, filthy word."

"[to Katherine] Every night I cut out my heart. But in the morning it was full again."

"[to Hana] K is for Katherine."

"[to Hana] In that case, I suppose we can't charge."

"[to Hana] Condensed milk - one of the truly great inventions."

"[to Kip] Hana was just telling me that you were indifferent...to her cooking."

"[to Caravaggio] I have come to love that little tap of the fingernail against the syringe. Tap...Tap...Tap."

"[singing the tune of "It's Only a Paper Moon" (by Harold Arlen, Billy Rose, and E.Y. Harburg)] It wouldn't be make believe if you believed in me."

"[last words; to Hana] Read to me will you? Read me to sleep."

"I must be a curse. Anybody who loves me, anybody who gets close to me...or I must be cursed. Which is it?"

"[to Almásy] It's raining."

"There's a war. Where you come from becomes important."

"[reading Almásy's note on the Christmas firecracker] Dec. 22nd [1938] - Betrayals during war are childlike compared with our betrayals during peace. New lovers are nervous and tender, but smash everything. For the heart is an organ of fire. For the heart is an organ of fire - I love that. I believe that."

"[to Almásy] I've been thinking - how does someone like you decide to come to the desert?"

"[to Almásy] And that would be unconscionable, I suppose, to feel any obligation? Yes. Of course it would."

"I'm not one of the walking wounded. It's only one night. Besides, if I remain it's the most effective method of persuading my husband to abandon whatever he's doing and come and rescue us."

"[to Almásy] This is not very good is it?"

"[to Almásy] Am I a terrible coward to ask how much water we have?"

"[to Almásy] Yes is a comfort. Absolutely is not."

"[to Almásy] You still have sand in your hair."

"[to Almásy] A woman should never learn to sew, and if she can she shouldn't admit to it."

"[to Almásy] This a different world is what I tell myself; a different life. And here, I'm a different wife."

"[reading from the notes she found in Almásy's book] The neck of K can never be something, not in my mind. And K's clothes always at ease on her. Does he notice? What is the significance of Betrayal? Does K bother with a moral Labyrinth - K's debate - does she debate?"

"[to Almásy] Am I 'K' in your book? I think I must be."

"[to Almásy] You speak so many bloody languages, and you never want to talk."

"[to Almásy] I can't do this anymore."

"[to Almásy] Do you think you are the only one who feels anything? Is that what you think?"

"[to Almásy] Why did you hate me? Don't you know you drove everybody mad?"

"[written in journal] 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'd 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've hidden in, like this wretched cave. I want all this marked on my body. We're the real countries. Not the boundaries drawn on maps, the names of powerful men. I know you will come carry me out into the palace of winds. That's all I've wanted, to walk in such a place with you, with friends. An earth without maps. The lamp's gone out, and I'm writing in the darkness."

"[to Almásy] 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 - 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 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."

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

"[to Hana] Ask him. Ask your saint who he is. Ask him who he's killed."

"[to Almásy] There was a result to what you did!"

"[to Hana after playing the piano] Look. See? Move that - and no more Bach."

"[reading from Kipling to Almásy] 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."

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

"[to Hana] This is what I do. I do this every day."

"[to Almásy, et.al.] Why are you people so threatened by a woman?"

"[to Madox] I'm going to surprise her. It's our anniversary. She's forgotten, of course."

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

"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."

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

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

"In love, there are no boundaries."

"In memory, love lives forever."