Meredith > Recent Status Updates

Maigret: The mistake is to believe that criminals aren’t people like anyone else, people who might have children and love them.

Maigret: Poverty, real poverty, produces two kinds of people: spendthrifts and misers. Mostly misers, who are so afraid of the bad days coming back that they’re capable of anything to ensure against them.

Yarpen Zigrin: In my day, sorceresses stayed in their towers, read learned books, and stirred cauldrons. They didn't get under warriors feet...

Maigret: Does [your husband] love you?
Fernande: Yes, I think so.
Maigret: Why?
Fernande: I don't know. Maybe because I love him.

Geralt: Now you're lying, Dandelion.
Dandelion: Not lying, embellishing, and there's a difference.

Maigret: Do you love him?
Fernande: The word doesn’t mean anything. There ought to be another one, a word invented specially, but it doesn’t exist yet.

Nova: Now I know sometimes what we want doesn't matter. Sometimes people can't keep their promises. Sometimes even astronauts can't reach the stars.

“Nova had no tears to cry. Her tears were lost somewhere inside her. Lost like she’d been her entire life. Lost in her own head, lost in her own world. Lost in space. Lost without Bridget.”

Bridget: First, we escape foster care. Then, we escape New Hampshire. Next, we escape America and, finally, planet Earth.

Nurse Lee: But life is made of happiness and tragedy in equal proportions, and we will never change that.

Nurse Lee: History is full of grim realities.

Gandalf: A king will have his way in his own hall, be it folly or wisdom.

Geralt: Only myths and fables do not know the limits of possibility.

Three Jackdaws: That which represents Chaos is menace, is the aggressive side. While Order is the side being threatened, in need of protection. In need of defense.

Berta: Anyone who loves in the expectation of being loved in return is wasting their time.

The priest: Fear again. If you want to control someone, all you have to do is to make them feel afraid.

Treebeard: I am not altogether on anybody’s side because nobody is altogether on my side.

Éothain: Do we walk in legends or on the green earth in the daylight?
Aragorn: A man may do both. The green earth, say you? That is a mighty matter of legend, though you tread it under the light of day!

Inspector Maigret: I’m not with anyone! I’m not against anyone! I’m just looking for the truth.

Nenneke: Only one thing can be said about exceptions. They exist. Nothing more.

Geralt: People like to invent monsters and monstrosities. Then they seem less monstrous themselves.

Puri: There were exactly the types of situations that made many physicians wary of difficult conversations with patients and families. After all, it was far easier to do whatever a difficult patient or family requested than to help them understand that their request might be impossible or dangerous or the cause of tremendous suffering. It wasn't right, but it was human.

Puri: Do we know how to listen when the body tries to tell us that it is dying despite our best efforts to forestall death?

Puri: In residency and the early months of fellowship, I had the impression that self-described fighters would be difficult patients. Fighters were the ones who didn't actually understand how sick they were. They demanded unrealistic treatments and berated doctors who wouldn't provide them.

Puri: I wondered why I sometimes offered patients treatments that I wished they'd decline. Deep down, I knew I wanted them to assume responsibility for making tough choices ... Yet patient autonomy -- the power to choose the type of care that was most in line with one's goals and values -- hinged on a clear understanding of how the therapies we offered might or might not benefit a patient.

Puri: I was learning that honesty sometimes took the form of measured, compact, declarative sentences. I had to be Ernest Hemingway. And this sometimes felt brutal, the exact opposite of compassionate. But the honesty was the compassion.

Gimli: Faithless is he that says farewell when the road darkens.
Elrond: Let him not vow to walk in the dark who has not seen the nightfall.

Puri: You remind yourself that it isn’t your job to erase or justify all of their suffering, but rather to see it, not ignore it. To ease it when you can.

Puri: We as physicians in training were impelled to prolong life, enable survival. We hadn't become doctors to recognize and accept dying.