Yash Desai

“I had to stop taking my
rheumatism medication when I first started taking the pills for my heart.

‘When it really comes down to it, it’s not a hard choice between your
heart and your joints, is it?’ the locum doctor had asked with a smile.

Dying of a heart attack probably wouldn’t be a bad way to go, I had time
to think, before he interrupted my thoughts.”
― Lisa Ridzén, When the Cranes Fly South

“In breathing, as in everything in life, the numbers are staggering – indeed fantastical. Every time you breathe, you exhale some 25 sextillion (that’s 2.5 × 1022) molecules of oxygen – so many that with a day’s breathing you will in all likelihood inhale at least one molecule from the breaths of every person who has ever lived.1 And every person who lives from now until the sun burns out will from time to time breathe in a bit of you. At the atomic level, we are in a sense eternal.”
― Bill Bryson, The Body: A Guide for Occupants

“There are thousands of things that can kill us—slightly more than eight thousand, according to the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems compiled by the World Health Organization—and we escape every one of them but one. For most of us, that’s not a bad deal.”
― Bill Bryson, The Body: A Guide for Occupants

“Make no mistake. This is a planet of microbes. We are here at their pleasure. They don’t need us at all. We’d be dead in a day without them.”
― Bill Bryson, The Body: A Guide for Occupants