• "The French say that to part is to die a little. To be forgotten too is to die a little. It is to lose some of the links that anchor us to the rest of humanity. When I met Burmese migrant workers and refugees during my recent visit to Thailand, many cried out: ‘Don’t forget us!’ They meant: ‘Don’t forget our plight. Don’t forget to do what you can to help us. Don’t forget we also belong to your world.’"

Aung San Suu Kyi, Nobel Lecture 2012

• "There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?"

Jonas Salk

• "You have a tendency to firmly attach yourself to anything older and female, collecting mothers in a way."

Marya Hornbacher, Wasted

• These medical memories, especially about the disappearance of house calls, were triggered by (…) a telephone call, only two days ago - an astounding, a unique call in my lifetime. It was from a doctor, a specialist. I had set a date with her and then cancelled three times because of the Arctic weather, even a sniff of which the heart man will not allow. Well the call from this much-pestered doctor. She asked me if it would be all right for her to come to me here at my apartment to take care of me. After I’d been revived from the fainting fit, I fell into a Gershwin response, I said it would be wonderful, marvellous, that you should care for me. And so she did."

BBC Radio 4, Letter from America by Alistair Cooke: The Day of the GP is Over - 23 January 2004

• Daylight…In my mind, the night faded. It was daytime and the neighborhood was busy. Miss Stephenie Crawford crossed the street to tell the latest to Miss Rachel. Miss Maudie bent over the azaleas./ It was summertime, and two children scampered down the sidewalk toward a man approaching in the distance. The man waved, and the children raced each other to him. It was still summertime, and the children came closer. A boy trudged down the sidewalk dragging a fishingpole behind him. A man stood waiting with his hands on his hips. Summertime, and his children played in the front yard with their friend, enacting a strange little drama of their own invention./ It was fall and his children fought on the sidewalk in front of Mrs. Dubose’s. The boy helped his sister to her feet and they made their way home. Fall, and his children trotted to and fro around the corner, the day’s woes and triumphs on their face. They stopped at an oak tree, delighted, puzzled apprehensive./ Winter, and his children shivered at the front gate, silhouetted against a blazing house. Winter and a man walked into the street, dropped his glasses, and show a dog./ Summer, and he watched his children’s heart break. Autumn again, and Boo’s children needed him."

Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

• "I will have always loved the sea. It will have always made everything peaceful inside me."

Albert Camus, from American Journals

• "You cannot help, when sleep begins to touch your eyes, but to wonder: What if? What if? And in that question, there is a longing, too much like the longing of a young girl in love. The sickness occupies your every thought, breathe like a lover at your ear; the sickness stands at your shoulder in the mirror, absorbed with your body, each inch of skin and flesh, and you let it work you over, touch you with rough hands that thrill./ Nothing will ever be so close to you again. You will never find a lover so careful, so attentive, so unconditionally present and concerned only with you./ Some of us use the body to convey the things for which we cannot find words."

Marya Hornbacher, Wasted