Michael Ondatje. The English patient (№ 44726)

I saw many tribes of the desert. These are the most beautiful people I have ever met. They did not care what we nationality - the Germans or the British, the Hungarians or the Africans. Soon we became indifferent. I became hated by the very concept of the nation. Constant awareness, a sense of their own and others ' national identity destroys the individual. Madox died just because of this. The desert is impossible to request, or to possess it - it is like a piece of cloth carried by winds, and it is impossible to press and hold stones.