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

I promised to tell you how one falls in love.

I thought I was being loved because I was being altered.

I've always loved history and history is collage, it is a juxtaposition of the good and the bad and the strange, and how you place those sentences together changes the whole mood of a history.

What began it all was the bright bone of a dream I could hardly hold onto.

Women want everything of a lover. And too often I would sink below the surface. So armies disappear under sand. And there was her fear of her husband, her belief in her honour, my old desire for self-sufficiency, my disappearances, her suspicions of me, my disbelief that she loved me. The paranoia and claustrophobia of hidden love.

How can you smile as though your whole life hasn't capsized