Ralph Fiennes: Almásy

The English Patient

Almásy

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.

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: There is no God... but I hope someone looks after you.
Madox: Just in case you're interested, it's called the suprasternal notch. Come and visit us in Dorset when all this nonsense is over.
[Heads away but turns back]
Madox: You'll never come to Dorset.

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: New lovers are nervous and tender, but smash everything. For the heart is an organ of fire.

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: I once heard of a captain who wore a patch over a good eye. The men fought harder for him.

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.

Almásy: That place. That place at the base of a woman's throat, you know, the hollow. Here. Does it have an official name?
Madox: For God's sake, man, pull yourself together.