A Quote by John Hersey

The doctors realized in retrospect that even though most of these dead had also suffered from burns and blast effects, they had absorbed enough radiation to kill them. The rays simply destroyed body cells - caused their nuclei to degenerate and broke their walls.
According to the 2000 'Report of the U.N. Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation,' the long-lasting effects of nuclear testing can be qualified in simple scientific terms: 'Radiation exposure can damage living cells, causing death in some of them and modifying others.'
And there stood Basta with his foot already on another dead body, smiling. Why not? He had hit his target, and it was the target he had been aiming for all along: Dustfinger’s heart, his stupid heart. It broke in two as he held Farid in his arms, it simply broke in two, although he had taken such good care of it all these years.
I think when people think of Pompeii, they think it was just destroyed by the volcano. Yes, it was the eruption of the volcano that eventually caused the pyroclastic surge that swept over Pompeii and destroyed it for good. But also, they had to face the effects of a very extreme earthquake and a tidal wave that swept in from the Bay of Naples.
It was like that class at school where the teacher talks about Realization, about how you could realize something big in a commonplace thing. The example he gave--and the liar said it really happened--was that once while drinking orange juice, he'd realized he would be dead someday. He wondered if we, his students, had had similar 'realizations.' Is he kidding? I thought. Once I cashed a paycheck and I realized it wasn't enough. Once I had food poisoning, and realized I was trapped inside my body.
The first stage had been all over before the doctors even knew they were dealing with a new sickness; it was the direct reaction to the bombardment of the body, at the moment when the bomb went off, by neutrons, beta particles, and gamma rays.
Teaching in Providence and Oakland, I realized that the first thing is that it wasn't good enough to come in and assume that I had what my students needed in terms of knowledge and skills. I also had to show them that I was their ally. I had to show them that I was concerned about them, wanted to relate to them, and that I was fundamentally on their side.
He exulted in the possession of himself once more; he realized how much of the delight of the world he had lost when he was absorbed in that madness which they called love; he had had enough of it; he did not want to be in love anymore if love was that.
in coming to terms with the newly dead, I seem to have agitated the spirits of the long dead. They were stirring uneasily in their graves, demanding to be mourned as I had not mourned them when they were buried. I was plunged into retroactive grief for my father, and could no longer deny, though I still tried, the loss I'd suffered at the death of my mother. ... Was it possible ... that one could mourn over losses that had occurred more than half a century earlier?
I had just finished playing a doctor in Doctors' and I had had to tell somebody that they had cancer. In that moment I thought, He's doing what I did!' We sat down and he said, I'm sorry, Mr. Timothy, but I've got bad news.' I thought, Oh!' He told me that they had found cancerous cells, but not a lot.
After my last girlfriend broke up with me, I looked at how our relationship had gone and how my previous relationships had gone, and even though those girlfriends had all been very nice women, I realized that I did not like being a boyfriend. I didn't like that role, so I thought I had to figure out some other way to, you know, have sex. And I much prefer paying for sex to being a boyfriend.
I listened, vaguely knowing now that I had committed some awful wrong that I could not undo, that I had uttered words I could not recall even though I ached to nullify them, kill them, turn back time to the moment before I had talked so that I could have another chance to save myself.
Within six months of starting my Ph.D. work in 1956, I had already obtained feeding tadpoles derived from transplanted nuclei of embryonic cells.
Enough time had passed that I was ready to write the book Hungry. Was it absolutely difficult? Completely. I had to go back and relive one of the more traumatic things in my life. I destroyed my body for three years and I nearly killed myself for a passion that I had. But I was finally able to close the door on that part of my life. It also allowed me to have a voice. And that's something I've wanted since I was a young girl, to be able to be heard.
Adults had the notion that juveniles needed to suffer. Only when they had suffered enough to wipe out most of their naturally joyous spirits and innocence were they staid enough to be considered mature. An adult was essentially a broken-down child.
Even though I've had the body of work I've had, and the success I've had, I do not rest on my laurels whatsoever.
I had throat cancer, and I had to have radiation treatments, and I couldn't sing for a long time; and this was in '97. I had 28 radiation treatments. I didn't die, thank God.
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