The Heart Specialist Quotes

“Happiness is a strange thing. It is something I tend to recognize only after it has passed, when I realize I miss it.”
― Claire Holden Rothman, The Heart Specialist

“It was the seventh of November, 1918. The war was finally over. Maybe it would be declared a holiday and named War's End Day or something equally hopeful and wrong. Wars would break out again. Violence was part of human nature as much as love and generosity.”
― Claire Holden Rothman, The Heart Specialist

“I had achieved my dream, but what had it brought? Wealth? I glanced at my dress, worn too many days now without washing, and at the patched cloak bunched under my arm. Renown? I’d been a celebrity in my student days, but since then I might as well have died. Happiness? My eyes pricked with tears. The day I received my degree I thought my life would be completely altered. I had entered the forbidden land of my father. Nothing would ever be the same. But in truth nothing happened. I remained plain old Agnes White, no richer or more famous or happier than before.”
― Claire Holden Rothman, The Heart Specialist

“Maybe a certain degree of deprivation was necessary to the experience of pleasure, just as suffering was an integral part of joy.”
― Claire Holden Rothman, The Heart Specialist

“Bookishness, an unfortunate trait for a girl, especially one who is not nice to look at.”
― Claire Holden Rothman, The Heart Specialist

“I looked briefly up from my notes. I was surrounded by hearts, sectioned and preserved. Hearts with holes. Hearts with leaking valves or thickened walls. Hearts with narrow or transposed aortas. I closed my eyes.”
― Claire Holden Rothman, The Heart Specialist

“You must have learned by now, Agnes, that it's not possible to judge a life from the outside," she said. Her voice had an edge. "One inevitably gets it wrong.”
― Claire Holden Rothman, The Heart Specialist