One of the most difficult things to contend with in a hospital is the assumption on the part of the staff that because you have lost your gall bladder you have also lost your mind.

How convalescence shrinks a man back to his pristine stature! where is now the space, which he occupied so lately, in his own, in the family's eye?

How sickness enlarges the dimensions of a mans self to himself! he is his own exclusive object. Supreme selfishness is inculcated upon him as his only duty.

Disease makes men more physical, it leaves them nothing but body.

A man can be riddled with malaria for years on end, with its chills and its fevers and its nightmares, but if one day he sees that the water from his kidneys is black, he knows he will not leave that place again, wherever he is, or wherever he hoped to be.

A cough is something that you yourself cant help, but everybody else does on purpose just to torment you.

The sick woman especially: no one surpasses her in refinements for ruling, oppressing, tyrannising.

I've got Bright s disease and he has mine.

When he is sick, every man wants his mother; if she's not around, other women must do. Zuckerman was making do with four other women.

First thing about being a patient-you have to learn patience.