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“You will go back out there and be a perfect Christmas Prince,” I hiss at myself. “You will pull yourself together, you pathetic asshole. He’s just a guy.” My intensity wanes. “Just a guy in a corset vest.” I deflate more. “Why did it have
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“Framing illness as even involving morality seems to me a mistake, because of course cancer does not give a shit whether you are a good person. Biology has no moral compass. It does not punish the evil and reward the good. It doesn’t even know about evil and good.
Stigma is a way of saying, “You deserved to have this happen,” but implied within the stigma is also, “And I don’t deserve it, so I don’t need to worry about it happening to me.”
― Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection
Stigma is a way of saying, “You deserved to have this happen,” but implied within the stigma is also, “And I don’t deserve it, so I don’t need to worry about it happening to me.”
― Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection
“It reminded me, that when we know about suffering, when we are proximal to it, we are capable of extraordinary generosity. We can do and be so much for each other. But only when we see one another in our full humanity. Not as statistics or problems, but as people who deserve to be alive in the world.”
― Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection
― Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection
“On my first day of training, she told me, "Death is natural. Children dying is natural. None of us actually wants to live in a natural world." Treating disease, whether through herbs or magic or drugs, is unnatural. No other animals do it, at least not with anything approaching our sophistication. Hospitals are unnatural. As are novels, and saxophones. None of us actually wants to live in a natural world.”
― Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection
― Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection
“We are powerful enough to light the world at night, to artificially refrigerate food, to leave Earth’s atmosphere and orbit it from outer space. But we cannot save those we love from suffering. This is the story of human history as I understand it—the story of an organism that can do so much, but cannot do what it most wants.”
― Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection
― Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection
“Henry is a human being, just as you are a human being. Consider yourself for a moment—everything you’ve overcome, everything you’ve survived. Think of the people who loved you up into your now. Think of how hard school is or was, how you were lucky or blessed to meet people you could love and who could love you. Think about how rare and precious humans are, and how many of them you get to worry for and care about. Then, if you can, find a way to multiply that times 1,250,000. That is why we must work together to end tuberculosis and all other diseases of injustice.”
― Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection
― Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection
Gabrielle’s 2025 Year in Books
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