“The English, who look on stoically as national health hospitals in run-down metropolitan areas close their wards through lack of support and patients spend time on trolleys in corridors, are comforted by the knowledge that wounded hedgehogs are tenderly cared for in a hedgehog hospital.”

“I followed Barry closely as we walked through the main doors of the hospital, down the corridor that smelt like disinfectant and false hope.”

“I bit my lip. 'Come on then, you dirty old man.' I stepped forward and smacked a kiss on Baz's lips. He looked petrified. The secretary looked horrified. I felt vindicated. 'Run along now, Daddy.' I said.”

“This is a familiar syndrome. There is a stage with every drawing or painting when it looks banal and clumsy. It's worth pushing through that, working through the cliché to find out what made it a cliché in the first place.”

“The hospital will never be healthy for patients if it's not a healthy environment for nurses, where their voices are heard and where they can care for their patients and use the full extent of their knowledge, abilities, and skills. After all, hospitals today have become one big intensive care unit: all patients need intensive caring.”

“Reading Shakespeare is sometimes like looking through a window into a dark room. You don't see in. You see nothing but a reflection of yourself unable to see in. An unflattering image of yourself blind.”

“So Medicare decided to pay hospitals like ours for internship andresidency training programs, get it? It’s a win-win, as they say—the hospitalgets patients cared for by interns and residents around the clock,people like us who live on site, and whose stipend is a bloody fraction of what the hospital would pay full-time physicians. And Medicare delivers health care to the poor.”