“Considering how common illness is, how tremendous the spiritual change it brings, how astonishing, when the lights of health go down, the undiscovered countries that are then disclosed, what wastes and deserts of the soul a slight attack of influenza brings to view, what precipices and lawns sprinkled with bright flowers a little rise of temperature reveals, what ancient and obdurate oaks are uprooted in us by the act of sickness. . . . [I]t is strange indeed that illness has not taken its place with love and battle and jealousy among the prime themes of literature.”
—Virginia Woolf, from her essay, “On Being Ill”
