De Anna

“Old measures of health not only have failed to improve significantly but have stayed the same: some have even worsened. Mainstream newspapers and magazines often report disease in an ethnocentric manner that shrouds its true cost among African Americans. For example, despite the heavy emphasis on genetic ailments among blacks, fewer than 0.5 percent of black deaths—that’s less than one death in two hundred—can be attributed to hereditary disorders such as sickle-cell anemia. A closer look at the troubling numbers reveals that blacks are dying not of exotic, incurable, poorly understood illnesses nor of genetic diseases that target only them, but rather from common ailments that are more often prevented and treated among whites than among blacks.”
― Harriet A. Washington, Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present

“...interests are not discovered through introspection. Instead, interests are triggered by interactions with the outside world. The process of interest discovery can be messy, serendipitous, and inefficient. This is because you can't really predict with certainty what will capture your attention and what won't...Without experimenting, you can't figure out which interests will stick, and which won't.”
― Angela Duckworth, Grit: Passion, Perseverance, and the Science of Success

“I decided to expect nothing from Buddy Willard. If you expect nothing from somebody you are never disappointed.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

“What is addiction, really?” the Swiss psychologist Alice Miller asks. “It is a sign, a signal, a symptom of distress. It is a language that tells us about a plight that must be understood.”
― Gabor Maté, In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction