Hospital Quotes

“And it's hard to hate someone once you understand them.”
― Lucy Christopher, Stolen

“It was awful and so surreal to see it unfold before my eyes. I will never forget that sight. The only thing I could think of is that one day you are king of your domain, and the next day you are being escorted to your car by security.”
― DEAN MAFAKO, M.D., Burned Out

“You understand that you are being manipulated by others and you become overwhelmed by hospital bureaucracy. It feels as though you have been violated by administrators who have robbed you of your passion for helping children. That passion that drove you to become a healthcare provider is replaced with mistrust, negativity, and hopeless skepticism.”
― DEAN MAFAKO, M.D., Burned Out

“Oh God just look at me now... one night opens words and utters pain... I cannot begin to explain to you... this... I am not here. This is not happening. Oh wait, it is, isn't it?

I am a ghost. I am not here, not really. You see skin and cuts and frailty...these are symptoms, you known, of a ghost. An unclear image with unclear thoughts whispering vague things...

If I told you what was really in my head, you''d never let me leave this place. And I have no desire to spend time in hell while I'm still, in theory, alive.”
― Emily Andrews, The Finer Points of Becoming Machine

“The nurses, I have already learned, are the ones who give us the answers we’re desperate for. Unlike the doctors, who fidget like they need to be somewhere else, the nurses patiently answer us as if we are the first set of parents to ever have this kind of meeting with them, instead of the thousandth.”
― Jodi Picoult, My Sister’s Keeper

“We'd been assured it wouldn't be painful, though she might experience 'discomfort,' a term beloved of the medical profession that seems to be a synonym for agony that isn't yours.”
― Lionel Shriver, We Need to Talk About Kevin

“I think-I need to ask an embarrassing question. Do you think I could borrow a pair of scrubs? I-uh-my pants-"

"Oh!" Cried the poor nurse. "Yes. Absolutely. I'll be right back."

[...]

"Thanks," I mumbled. "I'll just change here. He's not looking at anything at the moment." I gestured toward Sam, who was looking convincingly sedated.

The nurse vanished through the curtains. Sam eye's flashed open again, distinctly amused.

He whispered, "Did you just tell that man you went potty on yourself?"

"You.Shut.UP." I hissed back furiously.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, Shiver

“$13 to $20 billion a year could be saved in health care costs by demedicalizing childbirth, developing midwifery, and encouraging breastfeeding.”
― Frank Oski

“You're a hero,' Mom repeated, squeezing my hand and kissing my forehead. 'You saved six lives in that house! Six! Sure, one of them was a creep,' she looked at Lauren, 'but that's what makes it so good. "Love thine enemies."'
Lauren smiled at me. 'And don't worry about Curt,' she said. 'We are so broken up.'
'Six lives,' Mom repeated.
But I had been trying to save seven.”
― Dan Wells, Mr. Monster

“This is how most stories end in the hospital. Not with crash carts and sirens and electric shocks to the chest, but with an empty room, a crisp white bed, silence.”
― Jacob M. Appel, Phoning Home

“I slowly climbed back to my feet, walked back into the emergency department through the silently swishing glass doors, and, covered in my girlfriend's blood, lied perfectly for the first time in my life.
"I tried to stop her.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, Linger

“what a fascinating mix a hospital can be of people in a huge hurry and people too slow to get out of their way.”
― Josh Bazell, Beat the Reaper

“You knew then that this was not any kind of hospital that cured, but a hospital that held, that kept their patients away from the rest of the world, a kind of ark that floated along full of life, but not participating in life.... These people no longer made progress.”
― Anne Spollen, The Shape of Water

“There is no real bravery in getting paid to save someone's life. However, there is a large amount of bravery in a nurse break dancing at the hospital's Christmas party.”
― Shannon Alder

“The hospital room was as cold as dead skin, the hallway crowded with lost souls and reeking of illness.”
― Raquel Cepeda, Bird of Paradise: How I Became Latina

“The world is come upon me, I used to keep it a long way off, But now I have been run over and I am in the hands of the hospital staff.”
― Stevie Smith, Modern Classics Selected Poems Of Stevie Smith

“I grew up in a hospital and as a child I played in the dissecting room”
― Gustave Flaubert

“When traveling in rural Africa, it's important to not actually *go* to a hospital until the patient is on the brink of expiration, otherwise things are apt to get worse.”
― Josh Gates, Destination Truth: Memoirs of a Monster Hunter

“I went out into the corridor. I asked a nurse if she knew where the people with arthritis went. She said lots of them went to Ward 34 on the top floor. She said she thought that was a silly place to put people with bad bones who had such trouble walking and climbing stairs.”
― David Almond, Skellig

“Like my loved one, I am convinced that we all have critical conditions. Battles that we undertake behind the hospitals, in lonely alleys, secret locations and sometimes public places that are out of reach to those who seem to care.”
― Phindiwe Nkosi, Behind the Hospital

“I should be arguing vehemently with doctors, demanding results, I should be surrounded by people who are bleeding and screaming and shocking one another with defibrillators.”
― Dan Chaon, Stay Awake

“Sam Temple was taken by helicopter to a hospital in Los Angeles, where there were specialists there in burn injuries. He wasn’t consulted: he was found on his knees, obviously in shock, extensively burned. EMTs took over.
Astrid Ellison was taken to a hospital in Santa Barbara, as was Diana Ladris.
Other kids were shared out among half a dozen hospitals. Some specialized in plastic surgery, others in the effects of starvation.
Over the next week all were seen by psychiatrists once their immediate physical injuries were addressed. Lots of psychiatrists. And when they weren’t being seen by psychiatrists, they were being seen by FBI agents, and California Highway Patrol investigators, and lawyers from the district attorney’s office.
The consensus seemed to be that a number of the Perdido survivors, as they were now known, would be prosecuted for crimes ranging from simple assault to murder.
First on that list was Sam Temple.”
― Michael Grant, Light

“The Hospital for Infectious Diseases...The only people who lived here were those who made resistance to germs their only reason for being. Unceasing approbation of life; a rough, rude approbation that did not care at all about appearances. An approbation of life beyond law and beyond morality, dramatized and incessantly demanded by delirium, incontinence, bloody excrement, vomit, diarrhea, and horrible odors. This air which, like a mob of merchants hosting bids at a produce auction, craved in every second the call: "Still alive! Still alive!"...This mass off active bodies, unified by the unique form of existence they bore, namely, contagious disease. Here the value of men's lives and germ's lives frequently came to the same thing; patient and practitioner were metamorphosed into bacteria - into such objectless life. Here life existed only for the sake of being affirmed; no prettier desire was allowed. Here happiness reigned. In fact, here happiness, that mostly rapidly rotting of all foods, reigned in its most rotten, most inedible form.”
― Yukio Mishima

“I had become more interesting than whatever danced across those TV screens. I was the latest zoo exhibit, and I had to suffer this audience until I was through the hall. Part of me wanted to snarl or snap my jaws. I wanted to prove them right and turn into a beast before their eyes, one so feared and hated they wouldn't dare speak its name. I turned my eyes to the end of the hall and did not look away until I made it there.”
― Leah Myers, Thinning Blood: A Memoir of Family, Myth, and Identity

“Entombed in fluorescents”
― Ime Corkery, Persephone's Pancreas: A Medical Poetry Collection

“Sreedhareeyam is the Largest NABH Accredited Ayurvedic Eye Hospital in India”
― Sreedhareeyam

“The first hospital building had been constructed there in 1811; only eight years later Bellevue became the first U.S. hospital to formally require a qualified physician to pronounce a death (after a desperately ill man had been discovered among the corpses stacked on the morgue wagon).”
― Deborah Blum, The Poisoner's Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York

“While today may seem challenging, it’s not. Some people are visiting cancer hospitals for treatment. Their determination should demonstrate the opportunities you have today, they they hope one day they have too!” - Chris Geiger”
― Chris Geiger, The Cancer Survivors Club: A Collection of Inspirational and Uplifting Stories

“While today may seem challenging, it’s not. Some people are visiting cancer hospitals for treatment. Their determination should demonstrate the opportunities you have today, which they pray one day they will have too!” - Chris Geiger”
― Chris Geiger, The Cancer Survivors Club: A Collection of Inspirational and Uplifting Stories

“I did my electrician’s apprenticeship at the Royal Liverpool Hospital in the UK from 1986 to 1990. In 2024, the hospital was demolished.”
― Steven Magee