My Patients and Other Animals Quotes

“People had emotional needs I didn't understand and couldn't navigate, and they required my time and patience, which I didn't have enough of.”
― Suzy Fincham-Gray, My Patients and Other Animals: A Veterinarian's Stories of Love, Loss, and Hope

“Even with a family, a mortgage, and all the other small and large things that made a life, I struggled to establish a deeper connection to the San Diego earth. I couldn't find purchase in the sand at Coronado or beneath the ubiquitous palm trees. The sweaters I felt most comfortable wearing lay folded in a drawer; my wellies gathered dust in a closet. But swimsuits and flip=flops were alien to my British spirit.”
― Suzy Fincham-Gray, My Patients and Other Animals: A Veterinarian's Stories of Love, Loss, and Hope

“It was a popular and trendy neighborhood, but there was something bland about the bars and restaurants we visited. San Diego was nice - nice weather, nice beaches, and nice people - but it wasn't great. The diversity and texture I'd come to appreciate on the East Coast seemed to have been smoothed away by the surf and sand in sunny SoCal. I missed the tiny Ecuadorian restaurant a block from our Baltimor row home that served the best fried plantains, and our tiny local pub where we knew all the bartenders and they knew what we liked to drink. I missed houses built from bricks, and when summer changed into fall, most surprisingly, rain.”
― Suzy Fincham-Gray, My Patients and Other Animals: A Veterinarian's Stories of Love, Loss, and Hope

“She was petite - slim in the gaunt, brittle way of girls in their early twenties trying hard to be liked.”
― Suzy Fincham-Gray, My Patients and Other Animals: A Veterinarian's Stories of Love, Loss, and Hope

“He was a short, compressed man. Dark hair cut close to his head, tight full beard - even his glasses seemed to absorb into his face rather than adorn it. His clothes were cut economically; nothing was extraneous.”
― Suzy Fincham-Gray, My Patients and Other Animals: A Veterinarian's Stories of Love, Loss, and Hope