Like the experience of warfare, the endurance of grave or terminal illness involves long periods of tedium and anxiety, punctuated by briefer interludes of stark terror and pain.
Interpretation
The quote compares the challenges of facing a severe illness to the experiences of warfare, emphasizing the endurance required to cope with both.
Christopher Hitchens draws a parallel between the prolonged struggle of living with a serious illness and the experience of war. He highlights that both involve extended periods of waiting and anxiety, disrupted only by moments of intense fear and suffering, illustrating the psychological and emotional toll that such experiences can have on an individual.
In practice
In a speech about resilience, one might quote this to emphasize the emotional struggle of patients.
In a public dialogue with Salman in London he [Edward Said] had once described the Palestinian plight as one where his people, expelled and dispossessed by Jewish victors, were in the unique historical position of being 'the victims of the victims': there was something quasi-Christian, I thought, in the apparent humility of that statement.
What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
Never ask while you are doing it if what you are doing is fun. Don't introduce even your most reliably witty acquaintance as someone who will set the table on a roar.
[E]xceptional claims demand exceptional evidence.
The worst days are when you feel foggy in the head - chemo-brain they call it. It's awful because you feel boring. As well as bored. And stupid. And resigned.
Let me tell you something: for hundreds of thousands of years, this kind of discussion would have been impossible to have, or those like us would have been having it at the risk of our lives. Religion now comes to us in this smiley-face, ingratiating way β because itβs had to give so much more ground and because we know so much more. But youβve got no right to forget the way it behaved when it was strong, and when it really did believe that it had God on its side.
You can kill a revolutionary but you can never kill the revolution.
When I was depressed, nobody expected anything of me, nor did I expect anything of myself. I was exempt from life's demands and risks. But if I were to find new life, who knows what daunting tasks I might be required to take on?
In skating over thin ice our safety is in our speed.
We are called to speak for the weak, for the voiceless, for the victims of our nation and for those it calls enemy, for no document from human hands can make these humans any less our brothers and sisters.
Some people are so worn down by the yoke of oppression that they give up.
Timidity does not inspire bold acts.
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