“Dr Iannis had enjoyed a satisfactory day in which none of his patients had died or got any worse.”

“to die tomorrow was no worse than dying on any other day. Every day was there to be lived or to mark one’s departure from this world.”

“This was the very limit beyond which none of them had ever speculated, or even known that there was any speculation to be done.”

“Dr. Kertesz mentioned to me a case known to him of a farmer who had developed prosopagnosia and in consequence could no longer distinguish (the faces of) his cows, and of another such patient, an attendant in a Natural History Museum, who mistook his own reflection for the diorama of an ape”

“Charles was most comfortable by himself or, if that wasn't possible, with his pack in the wild. Talking for hours in a crowded auditorium was not on any list of things he enjoyed—or things he was good at. At least no one had died. Yet.”

“By morning she was dead. She had not died of starvation or committed suicide by any conventional means. She had simply willed herself to die, and being a strong-willed woman, she had succeeded. She had missed dying on her birthday by two days.”