The Epic of Gilgamesh

The joyful will stoop with sorrow, and when you have gone to the earth I will let my hair grow long for your sake, I will wander through the wilderness in the skin of a lion.

-The Epic of Gilgamesh
quoted (I)in The Skin of The Lion, by Michael Ondaatje

They are everywhere..

"...The man was shameless....
And the trouble with people who are shameless is that they are curiously invulnerable."

How, oh how true!

Sebastian Faulks, writing in Devil May Care.
(Penguin, 2008)

Tenets

"...attending surgeons say that whats more important to them is finding people who are conscientious, industrious and boneheaded enough to stick at practising this one difficult thing day and night for years on end...And in the end, that matters more.

Skill, surgeons believe, can be taught; tenacity cannot."

From, Complications by Atul Gawande.
(Penguin Books, 2002)

Of poets

"Thousands of poets wrote poetry
And were forgotten
Only one was remembered
I would rather be forgotten
With thousands of companions
Than be the lone immortal"


K. Satchidanandan, quoted in 'Life, Sweet and Sour', The Hindu, 27 Dec 2007