Quotes from Eula Biss

Purity, especially bodily purity, is the seemingly innocent concept behind a number of the most sinister social actions of the past century.

Not having money is time consuming. There are hours spent at laundromats, hours at bus stops, hours at free clinics, hours at thrift stores, hours on the phone with the bank or the credit card company or the phone company over some fee, some little charge, some mistake

My own thinking is often clarified and extended by talking with students.

Our constitution got built around the idea of minority protection.

The belief that public health measures are not intended for people like us is widely held by many people like me. Public health, we assume, is for people with less - less education, less-healthy habits, less access to quality health care, less time and money.

In the 19th century, smallpox was widely considered a disease of filth, which meant that it was largely understood to be a disease of the poor. According to filth theory, any number of contagious diseases were caused by bad air that had been made foul by excrement or rot.

I think there's a temptation to try to think of people who don't vaccinate as a homogenous community, but I'm not convinced that's true. I'm not even sure that the word 'community' is totally accurate there, you know.

Yes, there's a higher rate of people living below the poverty line who aren't vaccinated. But it's much rarer for that to be a product of choice than a product of circumstance.

There's a cultural expectation that everyone will be immunized, in part to protect the entire population. When people refuse that expectation, they're indulging in a certain kind of political or social immunity.

Bram Stoker's 'Dracula,' in my reading, is really obviously about disease and our relation to disease.

One of the shortcomings of our medical system is that doctors have very little time with their patients.

The more comfortable we are, research suggests, the more destruction we are likely to be causing.

If vaccination can be conscripted into acts of war, it can still be instrumental in works of love.

A trust—in the sense of a valuable asset placed in the care of someone to whom it does not ultimately belong—captures, more or less, my understanding of what it is to have a child.

the lies we want to believe tell us something about ourselves.

This is why the chances of contracting measles can be higher for a vaccinated person living in a largely unvaccinated community than they are for an unvaccinated person living in a largely vaccinated community.

I was only going to stay six months. I stayed three years, and I never stopped thinking about leaving. But when I left, I left my entire life behind. I have to explain to you why I no longer live in New York, but first I have to explain to myself why I stayed so long.

Sonata," he says, "means 'sounding together.' It is an argument in which one theme is presented in opposition to another and they struggle until one wins, in the resolution. It is a beautiful form, it has endured into this century.

We had been arguing for hours and it was dark in the room. We sat silently on the couch, I was tapping my foot against the table. He glanced at the green digital glow of the clock. "2:05 is beautiful," he said. I looked, and it was.

True empowerment of students, I came to realize, necessarily means a certain disempowerment of teachers.

Capitalism has already impoverished the working people who generate wealth for others. And capitalism has already impoverished us culturally, robbing unmarketable art of its value.

If by years of patient suffering, God can manage to take the harshness out of my voice, then the time has been well-spent.

Bicycles are sometimes kindly accommodated by cars, often ignored, occasionally respected, sometimes nervously followed, and frequently not even seen. In this sense, riding in traffic is not unlike being a woman among men.

Black is closing in around my eyes. I realize with a great, tired sadness that I am losing the world. The walls, the molding on the door frame, the yellow of the lamp, his back at the sink… are all achingly beautiful. I reach out and feel myself groping in the air, feel myself falling great distances, feel nothing at all. Suddenly, with a red rush I can breathe and I can see. I get up from the floor before he turns around and says, "You look flushed.