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141 " He moved with a slow gait. I never saw him dance. He was a man who wrote, who interpreted the world. Wisdom grew out of being handed just the smallest sliver of emotion. A glance could lead to paragraphs of theory. If he witnessed a new knot among a desert tribe or found a rare palm, it would charm him for weeks. When we came upon messages on our travels – any wording, contemporary or ancient, Arabic on a mud wall, a note in English written in chalk on the fender of a jeep – he would read it and then press his hand upon it as if to touch its possible deeper meanings, to become as intimate as he could with the words. "
― Michael Ondaatje , The English Patient
142 " Could you fall in love with her if she wasn’t smarter than you? I mean, she may not be smarter than you. But isn’t it important for you to think she is smarter than you in order to fall in love? .... You see, I think it is easier to fall in love with him than with you. Why is that? Because we want to know things, how the pieces fit. Talkers seduce, words direct us into corners. We want more than anything to grow and change. Brave new world. "
143 " She swabbed arms that kept bleeding. She removed so many pieces of shrapnel she felt she’d transported a ton of metal out of the huge body of the human that she was caring for while the army travelled north. "
144 " Her face became tougher and leaner, the face Cara-vaggio would meet later. She was thin, mostly from tiredness. She was always hungry and found it a furious exhaustion to feed a patient who couldn’t eat or didn’t want to, watching the bread crumble away, the soup cool, which she desired to swallow fast. She wanted nothing exotic, just bread, meat. "
145 " Character, that subtle art, disappeared among them during those days and nights, existed only in a book or on a painted wall. "
146 " The scale of the laying of mines in Italy and in North Africa cannot be imagined. At the Kismaayo-Afmadu road junction, 260 mines were found. There were 300 at the Omo River Bridge area. On June 30, 1941, South African sappers laid 2,700 Mark 11 mines in Mersa Matruh in one day. Four months later the British cleared Mersa Matruh of 7,806 mines and placed them elsewhere. "
147 " През половината от дните не мога без теб. В останалото време ми е все едно дали ще те видя пак. Това не е въпрос на морал, а на издръжливост. "
148 " There is God only in the desert, he wanted to acknowledge that now. Outside of this there was just trade and power, money and war. "
149 " Да почиваш, значи да приемаш всички страни на света, без да ги обмисляш. Къпане в морето, преспиване с войник, който никога не ще узнае името ти. Нежността към непознатото и безименното е всъщност нежност към собственото същество. "
150 " There was something about him she wanted to learn, grow into, and hide in, where she could turn away from being an adult. There was some little waltz in the way he spoke to her and the way he thought. "
151 " Small gestures were enough for him. One bullet ended the war. "
152 " They broke the way a man dismantling a mine broke the second his geography exploded. "
153 " The war is not over everywhere, she was told. The war is over. This war is over. The war here. "
154 " She was secure in the miniature world she had built; the two other men seemed distant planets, each in his own sphere of memory and solitude. "
155 " Birds prefer trees with dead branches,’ said Caravaggio. ‘They have complete vistas from where they perch. They can take off in any direction. "
156 " But isn’t it important for you to think she is smarter than you in order to fall in love? "
157 " But I wanted to erase my name and the place I had come from. By the time the war arrived, after ten years in the desert, it was easy for me to slip across borders, not to belong to anyone, to any nation. "
158 " من يضع فتات الطعام الذي يغويك؟يشدك نحو شخص لم تفكر به أبداً..حلم ثم فيما بعد,سلسلة أخرى من الأحلام "
159 " I have spent weeks in the desert, forgetting to look at the moon, he says, as a married man may spend days never looking into the face of his wife. "
160 " Fenelon-Barnes wanted the fossil trees he discovered to bear his name. He even wanted a tribe to take his name, and spent a year on the negotiations. Then Bauchan outdid him, having a type of sand dune named after him. But I wanted to erase my name and the place I had come from. By the time war arrived, after ten years in the desert, it was easy for me to slip across borders, not to belong to anyone, to any nation. "