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Revenge, the sweetest morsel to the mouth, that ever cooked in hell! —Sir Walter Scott, The Heart of Midlothian
“Life takes things from all of us, Ian. Perhaps not evenly, or fairly, but loss is universal. You can wrap yourself in your own grief, or you can move forward. There is no middle ground.” “But if we don’t stop to acknowledge loss and grief, how can we possibly go on?” “The problem arises when we become lost in our grief, and it becomes more attractive than moving forward. We become frozen.”
Grief was a strange companion. At first it had hit hard and strong, like a blast of frigid wind, a shuddering blow that left no air in his body. Then it subsided for a while, rising up from time to time like an adder, coiled and poised to sink its teeth into the flesh of its victim. Ian had tried outrunning it, then fighting it, but quickly found the best thing was to lie still and let it crash over him like a wave.
what do we have, really? A few brief moments in the sun, a little joy and pleasure, and, if we’re lucky, love. I realized, in spite of all the wasted years, I could choose to live.”
cruelty was a fact of life.
The literal translation of ‘autopsy’ is ‘self-seeing,’ or to ‘see with one’s own eyes.’ I suggest that is a good model for any physician to hold in mind. And not merely to see but to observe.”
“I drink to live—or to die. I drink to forget, I drink to remember. I drink because it is who I am.”
‘Vengeance is in my heart, death in my hand, blood and revenge are hammering in my head.’”
Work was the antidote—to faithless friends, determined killers, and a society more bent upon revenge than justice. It was something that could be done, whereas all one could do with life’s slings and arrows was to bear them, bravely or not. Without
