It was too late to unsee.

Bit by bit she regained the distance by which the doctors measured responsibility: Alone to Her Doctor's Office (100 ft. x 1 hr. sane); Alone on Front Grounds (200 ft. x 3 hrs. sane); and at last she applied to go to B ward, where the foot-hour rule would be given the whole inward sweep of books and pencils and sketch pads.

... it was not good form to seem too insistent.

... there was time to wait through, endless time, marked off by meals and sleep, a word or two brushing by, an anger, a story, or the raging delusion of another patient-all experienced disinterestedly and remembered only as part of the frieze of the sick around the walls of the ward.

... somewhere in the illness ... lay a hidden strength.

... she looked out into the congregation on Sunday and wondered if they ever thanked God for the light in their minds, for friends, for cold and pain responsive to the laws of nature, for enough depth of sight into these laws to have expectations, for friends, for the days and nights that follow one another in stately rhythm, for the sparks that fly upward ...

... this sickness, which everyone shied from and was frightened of, was also an adjustment.

... you have no corner on suffering.