Lab Girl

by Hope Jahren

He taught me that there is no shame in breaking something, only in not being able to fix it.

silent togetherness is what Scandinavian families do naturally, and it may be what they do best.

attention, positive or negative, at all times. Tiny but determined, I navigated the confusing and unstable path of being what you are while knowing that it’s more than people want to see.

My lab is the place where I put my brain out on my fingers and I do things.

Something so hard can be so easy if you just have a little help. In the right place, under the right conditions, you can finally stretch out into what you’re supposed to be.

Each beginning is the end of a waiting. We are each given exactly one chance to be. Each of us is both impossible and inevitable. Every replete tree was first a seed that waited.

Working in the hospital teaches you that there are only two kinds of people in the world: the sick and the not sick. If you are not sick, shut up and help. Twenty-five years later, I still cannot reject this as an inaccurate worldview.

I soon realized that the challenge would not be to defend myself from patients, but to defend myself against my own increasing indifference toward them.