Marissa Corona

“It seemed to Graham that one of the benefits of getting older was that your friends stopped getting married and having expensive boring weddings that wrecked your budget and ruined your weekend. (There aren’t a lot of benefits of getting older, but that was one of them.”
― Katherine Heiny, Standard Deviation

“When you go into the details of the cases, you see it’s not bad people,” he said. “It’s bad systems. When the systems depend on human vigilance, they will fail.”
― Michael Lewis, The Premonition: A Pandemic Story

“Yet another example is celiac disease. Individuals with celiac disease have an immune reaction to gluten, a group of proteins found in wheat, barley, and rye. The body’s strong immune reaction to gluten causes collateral damage to the wall of the intestines, creating “leaks” in the gut wall. Although the exact mechanism of celiac disease is still a mystery, it is known that autoantibodies damage the small intestines and other organs, causing severe cramping pain.17 Fortunately, when gluten is avoided, the antibodies wane and the symptoms usually go away. On the other hand, an autoimmune attack can be generalized and affect virtually every part of the body,”
― William W. Li, Eat to Beat Disease: The New Science of How Your Body Can Heal Itself

“it’s like planning a fabulous vacation trip—to Italy. You buy a bunch of guide books and make your wonderful plans. The Coliseum. The Michelangelo David. The gondolas in Venice. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It’s all very exciting. After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your bags and off you go. Several hours later, the plane lands. The flight attendant comes in and says, “Welcome to Holland.” “Holland?!?” you say. “What do you mean Holland?? I signed up for Italy! I’m supposed to be in Italy. All my life I’ve dreamed of going to Italy.” But there’s been a change in the flight plan. They’ve landed in Holland and there you must stay. The important thing is that they haven’t taken you to a horrible, disgusting, filthy place, full of pestilence, famine and disease. It’s just a different place. So you must go out and buy new guide books. And you must learn a whole new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you would never have met. It’s just a different place. It’s slower-paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy. But after you’ve been there for a while and you catch your breath, you look around . . . and you begin to notice that Holland has windmills . . . and Holland has tulips. Holland even has Rembrandts. But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy . . . and they’re all bragging about what a wonderful time they had there. And for the rest of your life, you will say “Yes, that’s where I was supposed to go. That’s what I had planned.” And the pain of that will never, ever, ever, ever go away . . . because the loss of that dream is a very, very significant loss. But . . . if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn’t get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things . . . about Holland.”
― Lori Gottlieb, Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed