The Eye of the Virus Quotes

“The rich and the poor, the educated and the ignorant, male and female, liberal and conservative, young and old, Asian and European – I do not discern the differences. I am a part of you, whether you like it or not.”
― Theresa MacPhail, The Eye of the Virus

“All he did was think and generally that meant thinking about his missteps. Over and over it he went, down to the minutest detail. He seemed to go backward in steps: if he hadn’t sliced Casey’s neck; if he hadn’t grabbed the scalpel; if he had never seen her kissing that British rock star, who had been asked to testify in court to such spectacular effect; if he had never gone to the island at all; if he had never faked the test data; if he had never ignored the severity of the psychological side-effects; if he had never even met Andrew White. Sometimes, in the dark of the night, Brian would think that Andrew had actually turned out to be the luckier of the two of them.”
― Theresa MacPhail, The Eye of the Virus

“There was nothing like a good, old-fashioned global health scare to get people to buy pharmaceuticals in mass quantities. Price wouldn’t even be a consideration; in all probability the U.S. government would fund everything.”
― Theresa MacPhail, The Eye of the Virus

“A brand-new, highly effective anti-flu drug that had potential for massive sales. With the new bird flu scare, Merwyn stood to make a bundle off of the ensuing panic. With a 98 percent profit margin and skyrocketing demand, Merwyn couldn’t lose. Andrew alone stood to make millions in stock options and bonus incentives for brokering the deal. It was like a dream come true: the global spread of the avian flu virus, millions infected, a few hundred thousand dead and millions more taking Preva-Flu by the $80 packet.”
― Theresa MacPhail, The Eye of the Virus

“They might have held green cards, but their values and traditions were still starkly Middle Eastern and Karim’s brother had chosen a beautiful Norwegian girl as his future wife. Not only had he not known her for long, which was the first objection, but she was also a former lingerie model, which for Karim’s parents was completely unacceptable. His father had pronounced the girl a gold-digger, his mother had practically called her a whore, and yet still his brother Arman persisted.”
― Theresa MacPhail, The Eye of the Virus

“With his dark skin, hair, and eyes, coupled with his youth and a penchant for dressing casually, he was the spitting image of a suspected terrorist. He was the one they pulled out of the crowd to pick over everything: his belongings, his body, his passport, his boarding pass. Only once they had ascertained that he was in fact who he claimed to be – that his toothpaste was not some kind of explosive, that his coffee was drinkable, that his computer was not fitted with a bomb, that his business trip to London was not a ruse for a more nefarious plot – was he actually allowed to board a plane.”
― Theresa MacPhail, The Eye of the Virus

“Globalization has not only benefited the human race, but all the microscopic species as well.”
― Theresa MacPhail, The Eye of the Virus

“The last time I had a similar opportunity for mass infection of the human race, it took a war to really spread myself around. All of the trenches, the enclosed spaces, the poor nutrition and cold weather were a boon to me. I couldn’t have scripted anything better. Plus, all the troop movements back and forth from their own countries to the war zones made hitching a ride all that much easier. Still, it took me months to spread to every part of the globe. They called me the Spanish Flu, but that wasn’t where I came from and wasn’t where I ended. Now they call it the killer flu of 1918, but that still is not very close to who or what I am. Killer”
― Theresa MacPhail, The Eye of the Virus

“My design is simple and simple is best for ultimate survival. But”
― Theresa MacPhail, The Eye of the Virus

“He should know better than to panic monger himself, that was for the media and the pharmaceutical companies to do.”
― Theresa MacPhail, The Eye of the Virus

“What better way to do that than to combat disease? What better method to fight illness than to understand its source?”
― Theresa MacPhail, The Eye of the Virus

“more good trying to prevent people from becoming ill than in trying to save them once they were already dying. What”
― Theresa MacPhail, The Eye of the Virus

“how wily a virus could be, how quickly it could change its appearance to disguise itself from the immune system, how easily it could exchange information with other viruses in order to become more contagious, more deadly, less susceptible to all subsequent efforts to control it. Each new person or living thing it infected offered another chance for a more successful mutation. Its possibilities were endless. In”
― Theresa MacPhail, The Eye of the Virus

“most children fully recovered. It was that word – most – that bothered Ted. It reverberated in the air, kept repeating itself in Ted’s ears. Most, most, most. Which in the end was really nothing but another way of saying some children did not make it, some children never got better, some children died. As”
― Theresa MacPhail, The Eye of the Virus

“rumbling over the supposed destructive power of the H5N1 strain of avian flu and the predicted crisis had still not manifested itself. Until three days ago, Greg would have said with confidence that it was simply a case of Chicken Little and a whole bunch of epidemiologists and public health workers worried over a sky that remained perfectly intact.”
― Theresa MacPhail, The Eye of the Virus

“only days to stop the spread of the virus should it prove to be highly contagious, which meant getting in qualified public health personnel who could help track possible victims and start a quarantine section within the hospital itself. But if they missed that tiny window of opportunity to stop the spread, it could mean impending disaster for both the hospital and the city-at-large. Greg”
― Theresa MacPhail, The Eye of the Virus

“Mr. Huang’s nickname was Old Yellow, because that is what his name literally meant and he was the senior person in the office.”
― Theresa MacPhail, The Eye of the Virus

“A few isolated cases of bird flu in Hong Kong and people were acting like sha gua, or silly melons.”
― Theresa MacPhail, The Eye of the Virus

“And to be not only powerful and rich, but also to be born good-looking and intelligent, was some kind of rare fortune – even her hard-to-please mother had said so.”
― Theresa MacPhail, The Eye of the Virus

“One could do almost anything with the right connections; without them, doing anything was difficult.”
― Theresa MacPhail, The Eye of the Virus

“Money is the most important thing,” his father said, looking directly in his son’s eyes, “without it you are certain to have a miserable life.” And Tim had believed him.”
― Theresa MacPhail, The Eye of the Virus

“Tim had tried to tell his supervisors that Vietnam was an iffy choice for a building site, but all they could see was a gleaming new factory producing goods with cheap labor – the profit margin.”
― Theresa MacPhail, The Eye of the Virus

“answering phone calls and emails at all hours of the day and night. That, he had decided, was what ‘globalization’ really meant. It meant working for the whole world, which truly never slept.”
― Theresa MacPhail, The Eye of the Virus

“he liked the idea of living in such an expensive place. It completed the picture of success he had set out to achieve for himself: good education, good job, beautiful and clever wife, nice home, luxury car, and extravagant things. “How”
― Theresa MacPhail, The Eye of the Virus

“Xiao Yun is very pretty,” he said, “but sometimes a beautiful face does not make a good wife. Better to have picked someone sensible, like your mother.”
― Theresa MacPhail, The Eye of the Virus

“was he really still pure Chinese? He had gone to an international high school, then to college in the United States, and then finally to law school in England. What did that make him? His mother said that made him successful.”
― Theresa MacPhail, The Eye of the Virus

“Glancing at his Rolex, a real one, not one of the fakes he saw on every other wrist in Hong Kong, he paced in front of the apartment door.”
― Theresa MacPhail, The Eye of the Virus