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.

Politically I don't believe anymore that we can only have one voice to a story, it's like having one radio station to represent a country.

In the book the relationship with Katharine and Almasy is sort of only in the patient's mind.

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.

Nowadays he doesn't think of his wife, though he knows he can turn around and evoke every move of her, describe any aspect of her, the weigh of her wrist on his heart during the night.

There was a time when mapmakers named the places they travelled through with the names of lovers rather than their own.

And it would be a spare life he would be certain to lead as a schoolteacher in some urban location. But he had a serenity that came with the choice of the life he wanted to live. And this serenity and certainty I have seen only among those who have the armour of books close by.