The point is, Rosa, he decided, that stories are the basic form of our understanding and insight. Their architecture. Without stories, the world would fall apart into meaningless pieces. It is our ability to tell stories that holds the world together. Thanks to our imagination, we spin something out of nothing. Once upon a time.
Sander Kollaard From the life of a dog
Earlier quotes
At that moment, before I could open my mouth, a patient stood up, pointed to the leg, and exclaimed ecstatically:
“You, doctor, are the Holy Father.”
The doctor smiled at her with tenebrous gentleness:
“The Holy Father?”
“You, doctor, are the Holy Father, repeated the patient, “and the other doctors civilian governors.”
The doctor’s mouth opened in immense satisfaction:
“This case is an excellent teaching tool. An excellent teaching tool. Don’t change her therapy and keep her for my class.
António Lobo Antunes: Knowledge from hell
There is not a profession in the world as does not have its particular humour. I regret that that of medical men is perhaps the grossest of them all. A proximity to the suffering of others produces a drollery more cruel than truly comic. It begins as a defence against horrors but soon becomes merely a way with them.
(Andrew Miller: Ingenious pain)
Suddenly a statement came to mind that I once read somewhere when I was a student, perhaps by Stendhal, and which I then wrote down in one of my notebooks because I thought it was very profound: ‘Man gets used to everything, except for happiness and rest.’ In essence, these words express the same thing as the physician’s reflection: ‘A healthy person is a sick person who does not know it.’
Georges Simenon, Big Bob