- Katharine Clifton: My darling. I'm waiting for you. How long is the day in the dark? Or a week? The fire is gone, and I'm horribly cold. I really should drag myself outside but then there'd be the sun. I'm afraid I waste the light on the paintings, not writing these words. We die. We die rich with lovers and tribes, tastes we have swallowed, bodies we've entered and swum up like rivers. Fears we've hidden in - like this wretched cave. I want all this marked on my body. We are the real countries. Not boundaries drawn on maps with the names of powerful men. I know you'll come carry me out to the Palace of Winds. That's what I've wanted: to walk in such a place with you. With friends, on an earth without maps. The lamp has gone out and I'm writing in the darkness.
- 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.
- Almásy: Every night I cut out my heart. But in the morning it was full again.
- Katharine Clifton: Darling, my darling.
- Almásy: You're wearing the thimble.
- Katharine Clifton: Of course, you idiot. I always wear it; I've always worn it; I've always loved you.
- Katharine Clifton: Will we be alright?
- Almásy: Yes. Yes, absolutely.
- Katharine Clifton: "Yes" is a comfort. "Absolutely" is not.
- Hana: There's a man downstairs. He brought us eggs. He might stay.
- Almásy: Why? Can he lay eggs?
- Hana: He's Canadian.
- Almásy: Why are people always so happy when they collide with someone from the same place? What happened in Montreal when you passed a man in the street? Did you invite him to live with you?
- Hana: He needn't disturb you.
- Almásy: He can't. l'm already disturbed.
- Katharine Clifton: I've been thinking. How does someone like you decide to come to the desert? What is it? You - you're doing whatever you're doing in your castle, or wherever it is you live, and one day you say, ''l have to get to the desert'' or what?
- Almásy: l once traveled with a guide who was taking me to Faya. He didn't speak for nine hours. At the end of it, he pointed at the horizon and said, ''Faya.'' That was a good day.
- Almásy: That's a Christmas cracker. A firecracker.
- Hana: This isn't your handwriting, is it?
- Almásy: Yes, it is.
- Hana: [reads Almásy's note on the firecracker] "December 22. Betrayals in 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. K? Who is K?
- Almásy: K is for Katharine.
- Almásy: Katherine, I - I just want you to know: I'm - I'm not missing you yet.
- Katharine Clifton: You will. You will.
- Katharine Clifton: Promise me you'll come back for me.
- Almásy: I promise, I'll come back for you. I promise, I'll never leave you.
- Almásy: What do you love?
- Katharine Clifton: What do I love?
- Almásy: Say everything.
- Katharine Clifton: Hm, let's see... Water. Fish in it. And hedgehogs; I love hedgehogs.
- Almásy: And what else?
- Katharine Clifton: Marmite - I'm addicted. And baths. But not with other people. Islands. Your handwriting. I could go on all day.
- Almásy: Go on all day.
- Katharine Clifton: My husband.
- Almásy: What do you hate most?
- Katharine Clifton: A lie. What do you hate most?
- Almásy: Ownership. Being owned. When you leave, you should forget me.
- [she adopts a look of disgust, pushes him gently away to get out of the tub, picks up her tattered dress and leaves]
- Almásy: When were you most happy?
- Katharine Clifton: Now.
- Almásy: And when were you least happy?
- Katharine Clifton: Now.
- Katharine Clifton: This - what is this?
- Almásy: It's a folk song.
- Katharine Clifton: Arabic.
- Almásy: No, no. It's Hungarian. My daijka sang it to me when I was a child growing up in Budapest.
- Katharine Clifton: It's beautiful. What's it about?
- Almásy: Szerelem means love. And the story, well, there's this Hungarian count. He's a wanderer. He's a fool. And for years he's on some kind of a quest for... who knows what. And then one day, he falls under the spell of a mysterious English woman. A harpy, who beats him, and hits him, he becomes her slave, and he sews her clothes, and worships...
- [Katharine starts hitting him]
- Almásy: Stop it! Stop it!
- [laughing]
- Almásy: You're always beating me!
- Katharine Clifton: Bastard! You bastard, I believed you! You should be my slave.
- Almásy: Dance with me.
- Katharine Clifton: No.
- Almásy: Dance with me. l want to touch you. l want the things which are mine which belong to me.
- Katharine Clifton: Do you think you're the only one who feels anything? Is that what you think?
- Almásy: Let me tell you about winds. There is a, a whirlwind from southern Morrocco, the Aajej, against which the fellahin defend themselves with knives. And there is the - the Ghibli, from Tunis...
- Katharine Clifton: [giggling] The "Ghibli"?
- Almásy: [smiling] The Ghibli, which rolls and rolls and rolls and produces a - a rather strange nervous condition. And then there is the - the Harmattan, a red wind, which mariners call the sea of darkness. And red sand from this wind has flown as far as the south coast of England, apparently producing showers so dense that they were mistaken for blood.
- Katharine Clifton: Fiction! We have a house on that coast and it has never, never rained blood.
- Almásy: No, it's all true. Herodotus, your friend. He writes about it. And he writes about a - a wind, the Simoon, which a nation thought was so evil they declared war on it and marched out against it. In full battle dress. Their swords raised.
- Katharine Clifton: I wanted to meet the man who could write such a long paper with so few adjectives.
- Almásy: Well, a thing is still a thing no matter what you place in front of it. Big car, slow car chauffeur-driven car.
- Geoffrey Clifton: Broken car.
- Almásy: It's still a car.
- Geoffrey Clifton: Not much use, though.
- Katharine Clifton: Love? Romantic love plutonic love, filial love. Quite different things, surely.
- Geoffrey Clifton: Uxoriousness. That's my favourite kind of love. Excessive love of one's wife.
- Almásy: Now there you have me.
- Hana: If one night I didn't come to see you, what would you do?
- Kip: I try not to expect you.
- Hana: Yes, but if it got late and... I hadn't shown up?
- Kip: Then I'd think there must be a reason.
- Hana: You wouldn't come to find me? Hmm. That makes me never want to come here. Then I'd tell myself, he spends all day searching. In the night, he wants to be found.
- Kip: I do. I do want you to find me. I do want to be found.
- Caravaggio: You're in love with him, aren't you? Your poor patient. You think he's a saint because of the way he looks? I don't think he is.
- Hana: I'm not in love with him. I'm in love with ghosts. So is he, he's in love with ghosts.
- Katharine Clifton: I'm impressed you can sew.
- Almásy: Good.
- Katharine Clifton: You sew very badly.
- Almásy: Well, you don't sew at all.
- Katharine Clifton: A woman should never learn to sew, and if she can she shouldn't admit to it.
- Hana: What about your own book?
- Almásy: My book? Oh, yes the Herodotus. Yes, you can read him.
- Hana: Oh, l found plums. We have plums in the orchard. There. We have an orchard.
- Almásy: Herodotus is the father of history. Do you know that?
- Hana: l don't know anything.
- [feeds Almásy a plum]
- Almásy: lt's a - it's a very plum - plum.
- Katharine Clifton: [dancing] Why did you follow me yesterday?
- Almásy: I'm sorry, what?
- Katharine Clifton: After the market, you followed me to the hotel.
- Almásy: I was concerned. A woman in that part of Cairo, a European woman, I felt obliged to.
- Katharine Clifton: [amused] You felt obliged to?
- Almásy: As the wife of one of our party.
- Katharine Clifton: So why follow me? Escort me, by all means, but following me is predatory, isn't it?
- Hana: [crying, her face a frozen mask] I must be a curse. Anybody who loves me, anybody who gets close to me... or I must be cursed. Which is it?
- Muller: [interrogating Caravaggio] Look here, for every name you give me, I'll let you keep a finger. You give me something, and you'll keep something.
- Caravaggio: Don't cut me.
- Muller: Are thumbs fingers?
- [to Lieutenant]
- Muller: Ist ein Daumen ein Finger?
- Interrogation Room Soldier: [phone rings] Telefon.
- Muller: I'm sick of this room. I'm sick of this heat! And I'm sick of this damn telephone!
- [hangs it up]
- Caravaggio: In Italy, you get chickens, but no eggs. In Africa there were always eggs, but... never chickens. Who separated them?
- Katharine Clifton: D'you not come in?
- Almásy: No. I should go home.
- Katharine Clifton: Will you please come in?
- Almásy: Mrs. Clifton...
- Katharine Clifton: [scowls] Don't.
- Almásy: I believe you still have my book.
- Caravaggio: l'm one of his ghosts and he wouldn't even know it.
- Hana: l don't know what that means.
- Caravaggio: Ask your saint who he is. Ask him who he's killed.
- Almásy: Could I ask you, please, to paste you paintings into my book? I should like to have them. I should be honored.
- Almásy: [mocking toast] The International Sand Club: misfits, buggers, fascists, and fools. God bless us, every one. Oops! Mustn't say ''lnternational". Dirty word, *filthy* word.
- Almásy: When l arrived in ltaly on my medical chart they wrote ''English Patient.'' lsn't that funny? After all that l became English.
- Hana: The war's over - you told me yourself. How can it be desertion?
- Oliver: It's not over everywhere. I didn't mean literally.
- Hana: [looking at Almasy] When he dies I'll catch up.
- Oliver: [looking over the small cache of provisions] It's not safe here. The whole country's crawling with Bandits and Germans and God knows what. It's madness. I can't allow it. You're not alright, this is natural. It's shock. For all of us. Hana?
- Hana: [bent] I need morphine. A lot. And a pistol.
- Oliver: [clutching at straws, about Almasy] And what if he really is a spy?
- Hana: [impatient] He can't even move!
- Oliver: If anything happened to you I'd never forgive myself.
- [as Hana nods and smiles]
- Oliver: ... We're heading for Leghorn. Livorno the Italians call it. We'll expect you.
- Almásy: So, Caravaggio, Hana thinks you invented your name.
- Caravaggio: And you've forgotten yours.
- Almásy: l said that no one would ever invent such a preposterous name.
- Caravaggio: And l said you can forget everything but you never forget your name.