Quotes from Beat the Reaper

“Ah, youth. It's like heroin you've smoked instead of snorted. Gone so fast you can't believe you still have to pay for it.”
― Josh Bazell, quote from Beat the Reaper

“When God is truly angry, He will not send vengeful angels.

He will send Magdalena.

Then take her away.”
― Josh Bazell, quote from Beat the Reaper

“It's a weird curse, when you think about it. We're built for thought, and civilization, more than any other creature we've found. And all we really want to be is killers. ”
― Josh Bazell, quote from Beat the Reaper

“what a fascinating mix a hospital can be of people in a huge hurry and people too slow to get out of their way.”
― Josh Bazell, quote from Beat the Reaper

“Calling a tongue piecing 'cosmetic' is a bit of a stretch, since you don't get one because it makes you look better. You get one because you're so desperate for affection that you're willing to gruesomely harm yourself to advertise how well you suck dick.”
― Josh Bazell, quote from Beat the Reaper

“If you're going to be soulless, you should at least consider outsourcing your conscience to someone else.”
― Josh Bazell, quote from Beat the Reaper

“So I'm on my way to work and I stop to watch a pigeon fight a rat in the snow, and some fuckhead tries to mug me!”
― Josh Bazell, quote from Beat the Reaper

“The journey from shame to resentment is the shortest on there is.”
― Josh Bazell, quote from Beat the Reaper

“The fucking beef industry and the fucking HMO industry,' Friendly says. 'Al-Cowda and HMOsama.”
― Josh Bazell, quote from Beat the Reaper

“But rituals turn us all into fucking idiots. Like those birds that sleep with their heads facing backwards because their ancestors slept with their heads under their wings. Plutarch says carrying new wives across thresholds is stupid because we don't remember that it refers to the rape of the Sabine women - and that's fucking Plutarch, two thousand years ago. We still draw the Reaper with a scythe. We should draw him driving a John Deere for Archer Daniels Midland.”
― Josh Bazell, quote from Beat the Reaper

“that look you get after every bone in your face has been broken at least once and then allowed to set without medical attention”
― Josh Bazell, quote from Beat the Reaper

“Deliverance' is The Godfather for crackers.”
― Josh Bazell, quote from Beat the Reaper

“My medical students. Two cups of human misery in short white coats. One is male and the other one female, and they both have names. That's all I can ever remember about them.”
― Josh Bazell, quote from Beat the Reaper

“Llamar "intervención estética" a un piercing en la lengua es un poco elástico, habida cuenta de que no se lo ha hecho para estar más guapa. Se lo ha hecho porque está tan falta de cariño que no duda en causarse un grave perjuicio a sí misma para anunciar lo bien que chupa la polla.”
― Josh Bazell, quote from Beat the Reaper

“So I'm on my way to work and I stop to watch a pigeon fight a rat in the snow, and some fuckhead tries to mug me! Naturally there's
a gun. He comes up behind me and sticks it into the base of my skull. It’s cold, and it actually feels sort of good, in an acupressure
kind of way. “Take it easy, Doc,” he says.”
― Josh Bazell, quote from Beat the Reaper

“I should say here that being chronically sleep-deprived is so demonstrably similar to being drunk that hospitals often feel like giant, ceaseless office Christmas parties. Except that at a Christmas party the schmuck standing next to you isn't about to fillet your pancreas with something called a “hot knife.”
― Josh Bazell, quote from Beat the Reaper

“Camino del parque me pregunta Mershawn cómo sabía que el tío tenía enfisema, y le enumero los síntomas visibles que mostraba. Luego le digo:
- Lección de hoy, Mershawn. ¿Quiénes silban?
- ¿Los gilipollas?
- Vale. ¿Quién más?
Mershawn reflexiona un instante.
- La genet que está pensando en algo y que, de manera subliminal, lo asocia a una canción. Como cuando examinas un nervio del undécimo par craneal y empiezas a silbar "Mantén la cabeza erguida".
- Bien - apruebo -. Pero mucha gente también silba porque subconscientemente intenta incrementar la presión de aire en los pulmones, para hacer que pase más oxígeno entre los tejidos.
- No joda.
- Sin joder. ¿Te acuerdas de los enanitos de Blancanieves, que trabajan en la mina?
- Sí, vale.
- Si tienes silicosis, también te dejas el culo silbando.
- La hostia.
- Eso.
Hasta llegar a la esquina me siento como el Profesor Marmoset.”
― Josh Bazell, quote from Beat the Reaper

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“It's not hard to mess things up.
It's a lot harder to try and put the world back together again.”
― Neil Gaiman, quote from MirrorMask

“I am in love with you, Magdalene. What I feel for you is timeless. And when I die, when this body releases me, I will find you and I will be your eternal protector.”
― Laury Falter, quote from Reckoning

“So many synapses,' Drisana said. 'Ten trillion synapses in the cortex alone.'
Danlo made a fist and asked, 'What do the synapses look like?'
'They're modelled as points of light. Ten trillion points of light.' She didn't explain how neurotransmitters diffuse across the synapses, causing the individual neurons to fire. Danlo knew nothing of chemistry or electricity. Instead, she tried to give him some idea of how the heaume's computer stored and imprinted language. 'The computer remembers the synapse configuration of other brains, brains that hold a particular language. This memory is a simulation of that language. And then in your brain, Danlo, select synapses are excited directly and strengthened. The computer speeds up the synapses' natural evolution.'
Danlo tapped the bridge of his nose; his eyes were dark and intent upon a certain sequence of thought. 'The synapses are not allowed to grow naturally, yes?'
'Certainly not. Otherwise imprinting would be impossible.'
'And the synapse configuration – this is really the learning, the essence of another's mind, yes?'
'Yes, Danlo.'
'And not just the learning – isn't this so? You imply that anything in the mind of another could be imprinted in my mind?'
'Almost anything.'
'What about dreams? Could dreams be imprinted?'
'Certainly.'
'And nightmares?'
Drisana squeezed his hand and reassured him. 'No one would imprint a nightmare into another.'
'But it is possible, yes?'
Drisana nodded her head.
'And the emotions ... the fears or loneliness or rage?'
'Those things, too. Some imprimaturs – certainly they're the dregs of the City – some do such things.'
Danlo let his breath out slowly. 'Then how can I know what is real and what is unreal? Is it possible to imprint false memories? Things or events that never happened? Insanity? Could I remember ice as hot or see red as blue? If someone else looked at the world through shaida eyes, would I be infected with this way of seeing things?'
Drisana wrung her hands together, sighed, and looked helplessly at Old Father.
'Oh ho, the boy is difficult, and his questions cut like a sarsara!' Old Father stood up and painfully limped over to Danlo. Both his eyes were open, and he spoke clearly. 'All ideas are infectious, Danlo. Most things learned early in life, we do not choose to learn. Ah, and much that comes later. So, it's so: the two wisdoms. The first wisdom: as best we can, we must choose what to put into our brains. And the second wisdom: the healthy brain creates its own ecology; the vital thoughts and ideas eventually drive out the stupid, the malignant and the parasitical.”
― David Zindell, quote from The Broken God

“Maybe it’s not, in the end, the virtues of others that so wrenches our hearts as it is the sense of almost unbearably poignant recognition when we see them at their most base, in their sorrow and gluttony and foolishness. You need the virtues, too—some sort of virtues—but we don’t care about Emma Bovary or Anna Karenina or Raskolnikov because they’re good. We care about them because they’re not admirable, because they’re us, and because great writers have forgiven them for it.”
― Michael Cunningham, quote from By Nightfall

“It has been my experience that the people I judge most harshly are the ones in whom I recognize some part of myself.”
― Melissa Febos, quote from Whip Smart: A Memoir

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