“The patient is the one with the disease”
― Samuel Shem, quote from The House of God
“Life's like a penis; When it's soft you can't beat it; When it's hard you get screwed. - The Fat Man, Medical Resident in The House of God”
― Samuel Shem, quote from The House of God
“Basch: So why don't you ask her out?
The Runt: I'm scared she wouldn't like me and say no.
-So what? What have you got to lose?
-The possibility -if she says no- that she might have said yes. Whatever I do, I don't want to lose that possibility.”
― Samuel Shem, quote from The House of God
“Law XIII. THE DELIVERY OF MEDICAL CARE IS TO DO AS MUCH NOTHING AS POSSIBLE”
― Samuel Shem, quote from The House of God
“There is no body cavity that cannot be reached with a number fourteen needle and a good strong arm.”
― Samuel Shem, quote from The House of God
“It's an incredible paradox that being a doctor is so degrading and yet is so valued by society”
― Samuel Shem, quote from The House of God
“Gomers are human beings who have lost what goes into being human beings. They want to die, and we will not let them.”
― Samuel Shem, quote from The House of God
“To do nothing for the gomers was to do something, and the more conscientiously I did nothing the better they got.”
― Samuel Shem, quote from The House of God
“I found myself thinking of Potts as a tragic figure, a guy who'd been a happy towheaded kid you'd love to take fishing with you, who'd mistakenly invested in academic medicine when he'd have been happy in his family business, and who'd become a splattered mess on the parking lot of a hospital in a city he'd despised. What had been the seductiveness of medicine? Why?”
― Samuel Shem, quote from The House of God
“We were putting into these gomers our fear of death, but who knew if they feared death? Perhaps they welcomed death like a dear long-lost cousin, grown old but still known, coming to visit, relieving the loneliness, the failing of the senses, the fury of the half-blind looking into the mirror and not recognizing who is looking back, a dear friend, a dear reliever, a healer who would be with them for an eternity, the same eternity as the long ago, before birth.”
― Samuel Shem, quote from The House of God
“I realized with alarm that I hadn’t learned how to save anyone at all, not Dr. Sanders or Lazarus or Jimmy or Saul or Anna O., and that what I was thrilled about was learning how to save myself.”
― Samuel Shem, quote from The House of God
“It ain't easy to do nothing, now that society is telling everyone that their body is fundamentally flawed and about to self-destruct. People are afraid they're on the verge of death all the time”
― Samuel Shem, quote from The House of God
“This wine makes me feel like I’m bathed in amnion, breathless, fed by the motherbloodflow in the umbilical vein, fetal, slippery and tumbling over and over in the warmth of the beating womb, warm amnion, warmnion.”
― Samuel Shem, quote from The House of God
“You know what they say: It's better to have dyspareuned than never to have pareuned at all.”
― Samuel Shem, quote from The House of God
“Every intern makes mistakes. The important thing is neither to make the same mistakes twice nor to make a whole bunch of mistakes all at once.”
― Samuel Shem, quote from The House of God
“Key concept," said the Fat Man, "to think that you're doing a shitty job. If you resign yourself to doing a shitty job, you go ahead and get the job done, and since we're all in the ninety-ninth percentile of interns, at one of the best ternships in the world, what you do turns out to be a terrific job, a superlative job. Don't forget that four out of every ten interns in America can't speak English.”
― Samuel Shem, quote from The House of God
“Hmm. Say, did that BMS has a hobby?'
The head nurse picked up the chart, turned to the special section created by Pinkus, called 'Hobbies," and said, 'Nope. No hobby.'
'There,' said Pinkus. 'See? No hobby. He didn't have a hobby, do you understand? Do you have a hobby, Roy?'
With some alarm I realized that I did not, and said so.
'You should have at least one.”
― Samuel Shem, quote from The House of God
“But gomers are not just dear old people,” said Fats. “Gomers are human beings who have lost what goes into being human beings. They want to die, and we will not let them. We’re cruel to the gomers, by saving them, and they’re cruel to us, by fighting tooth and nail against our trying to save them. They hurt us, we hurt them.”
― Samuel Shem, quote from The House of God
“I’ve been drunk while swimming in the river, at noon the temperature of water, air, and body all the same, so that I can’t tell where body ends and water begins and it’s a melding of the universe, with the river curling round our bodies, cool and warm rushes intermingling in lost patterns, filling all times and all depths.”
― Samuel Shem, quote from The House of God
“To look forward to whatever flowed through the doors. To save a life? Two lives? I felt proud. The burden of treating the intractable, untreatable, unplaceable, unwanted, had been replaced by the fantasy of being a real doctor, dealing with real disease.”
― Samuel Shem, quote from The House of God
“Sometimes, drunk, I ruminate on the state of my liver, and think of all the cirrhotics I have watched turn yellow and die. They either bleed out, raving, coughing up and drowning in blood from ruptured esophageal veins, or, in coma, they slip away, slip blissfully away down the yellow-brick ammonia-scented road to oblivion.”
― Samuel Shem, quote from The House of God
“The thing is," said Gilheeny, "is that we live in constant fear of our lives. It makes the blood pressure elevate like an Arabian geyser, and the tension headaches we get would knock the balls off a bull with the twist in the maxillary sinuses themselves.”
― Samuel Shem, quote from The House of God
“when Mrs. Risenshein arrested and I was surprised to hear myself cursing under my breath as I resuscitated her, “I wish she would die so I could just go to sleep,” and I was shocked when I realized that I’d just wished a human being dead so I could go to sleep. Animal. Eat”
― Samuel Shem, quote from The House of God
“Just remember, though—your freedom means my freedom too.”
― Samuel Shem, quote from The House of God
Samuel Shem
Born date January 1, 1944
See more on GoodReads
“Go back and rid the word of that book. Fill it with words before spring comes, or winter will never end for you. And I will take not only your life for the Adderhead's but your daughter's, too, because she helped you bind the book. Do you undersand, Bluejay"
Why two?" asked Mo hoarsely. "How can you ask for two lives in return for one?”
― Cornelia Funke, quote from Muerte de tinta
“I seem to be an expert at getting people's backs up. And I fully admit to occasionally doing it on purpose. Must be the boredom." Alex sighed.
"You mean, you like to test people? Push them to their limits? Use the shock tactic of saying out loud the things that most other human beings wouldn't dare to? In order to deflate them, to break down their guard, which immediately puts you in control?"
"Touche, Madam." Alex looked at her with new respect. "Well now, with that piercing riposte, plus the slap this afternoon, I'd say we're quits, wouldn't you?”
― Lucinda Riley, quote from The Light Behind the Window
“In no country has such constant care been taken as in America to trace two clearly distinct lines of action for the two sexes, and to make them keep pace one with the other, but in two pathways which are always different. American women never manage the outward concerns of the family, or conduct a business, or take a part in political life; nor are they, on the other hand, ever compelled to perform the rough labor of the fields, or to make any of those laborious exertions which demand the exertion of physical strength.
No families are so poor as to form an exception to this rule. If on the one hand an American woman cannot escape from the quiet circle of domestic employments, on the other hand she is never forced to go beyond it. Hence it is that the women of America, who often exhibit a masculine strength of understanding and a manly energy, generally preserve great delicacy of personal appearance and always retain the manners of women, although they sometimes show that they have the hearts and minds of men.
Nor have the Americans ever supposed that one consequence of democratic principles is the subversion of marital power, of the confusion of the natural authorities in families. They hold that every association must have a head in order to accomplish its object, and that the natural head of the conjugal association is man. They do not therefore deny him the right of directing his partner; and they maintain, that in the smaller association of husband and wife, as well as in the great social community, the object of democracy is to regulate and legalize the powers which are necessary, not to subvert all power.”
― Alexis de Tocqueville, quote from De la Démocratie en Amérique, tome II
“Education is beautification of the inner world and the outer world.”
― Amit Ray, quote from Nonviolence: The Transforming Power
“Just that I figure at some point, some guy must have been able to make you smile. And I always wondered if it was the same guy that made you stop.”
― Lauren Layne, quote from The Trouble with Love
Mid Ocean
Captivated
Raid
Don't Make Me Beauti...
The Varieties of Rel...
DivisaderoBookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.
Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.
