Grace strikes us when we are in great pain and restlessness. It strikes us when we walk through the dark valley of a meaningless and empty life. It strikes us when our disgust for our own being, our indifference, our weakness, our hostility, and our lack of direction and composure have become intolerable to us. It strikes us when, year after year, the longed-for perfection of life does not appear, when the old compulsions reign within us as they have for decades, when despair destroys all joy and courage. Sometimes at that moment a wave of light breaks into our darkness, and it is as though a voice were saying: __ou are accepted.

The cruelty intrinsic to the workhouse system was excused by the need to discourage idleness, much as the malice intrinsic to the mental hospital system has been excused by the need to provide treatment.

You have to figure that there is something seriously wrong with somebody who wants to enter a profession that deals with whether people are screwing enough. Dealing with spirits, spooks, and demons almost seemed normal.

Theirs was the eternal youth of an alternating self, a youth with the constant although unfulfilled promise of growing up

_all that goes under the name of science is not necessarily scientific, and that all that goes under the name of health-care will not necessarily care for your health.

Calling it lunacy makes it easier to explain away the things we don't understand.