Aya

“Don’t think I ever spent a minute of any day wondering why I did this work, or whether it was worth it. The call to protect life—and not merely life but another’s identity; it is perhaps not too much to say another’s soul—was obvious in its sacredness. Before operating on a patient’s brain, I realized, I must first understand his mind: his identity, his values, what makes his life worth living, and what devastation makes it reasonable to let that life end. The cost of my dedication to succeed was high, and the ineluctable failures brought me nearly unbearable guilt. Those burdens are what make medicine holy and wholly impossible: in taking up another’s cross, one must sometimes get crushed by the weight.”
― Paul Kalanithi, When Breath Becomes Air

“I have a feeling that inside you somewhere, there’s something nobody knows about. —Shadow of a Doubt (1943)”
― A.J. Finn, The Woman in the Window

“The “what-ifs”: they’ll do a number on you.”
― Wally Lamb, We Are Water

“That’s often the case, of course—that creation and madness begin to dance with each other.”
― Wally Lamb, We Are Water