“Shall I show you the half-dozen other rooms in this hospital where these scenes are repeated? And what of the other hospitals? Printing House Square is small and tame. Even in the private institutions uptown you can see a show just like this: there is nothing as disgusting as an obese cadaver in which all the futile pleasures of many years finally arise to fill it full-blown with stinking rotten gases. The city is burning and under siege. And we are in a war in which everyone is killed and no one is remembered.""What am I supposed to do, then," Peter Lake asked, "if it's like you say?""Is there someone you love?""Yes.""A woman?""Yes.""Then go home to her.""And who will remember her?""No one. That's just the point. You must take care of all that now.”

Mark Helprin

Mark Helprin - “Shall I show you the half-dozen other...” 1

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