The collection / 28 fragments

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Passages, proverbs, and questions carried across the ages.

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01Undated

Food wasn’t one of the amenities at Cooper, the five-hundred-bed hospital on which millions of poor people depended. Nor was medicine. “Out of stock today” was the nurses’ official explanation. Plundered and resold out of supply cabinets was an unofficial one. What patients needed, families had to buy on the street and bring in.

Katherine Boo / quote

02Undated

It is easy, from a safe distance, to overlook the fact that in undercities governed by corruption, where exhausted people vie on scant terrain for very little, it is blisteringly hard to be good.

Katherine Boo / quote

03Undated

At the heart of her bad nature, like many bad natures, was probably envy. And at the heart of envy was possibly hope - that the good fortune of others might one day be hers

Katherine Boo / quote

04Undated

When I'm engaged in a story my health is not a big deal, but when I'm not doing anything, if you sit me down, I can get tied up in my own medical dramas. So I much prefer to work.

Katherine Boo / quote