{"author":"Jacob M. Appel","author_id":"Jacob+M.+Appel","total_quotes":15,"quotes":[{"text":"Never make enemies of anyone younger or healthier than you are. They write your history.","author":"Jacob M. Appel","tags":["advice","advice-for-daily-living","age","enemies","friends","history","younger","youth"],"id":3866,"author_id":"Jacob+M.+Appel"},{"text":"A century ago, people laughed at the notion that we were descended from monkeys. Today, the individuals most offended by that claim are the monkeys.","author":"Jacob M. Appel","tags":["apes","biologists","biology","darwin","evolution","evolutionary-biology","humor","moneys","primate","primates","progress","science","scopes","scopes-monkey-trial"],"id":20390,"author_id":"Jacob+M.+Appel"},{"text":"Patriotism is being convinced your country is better because you were born in it.","author":"Jacob M. Appel","tags":["american-exceptionalism","birth","nationalism","patriotism","patriots"],"id":48804,"author_id":"Jacob+M.+Appel"},{"text":"This is how most stories end in the hospital. Not with crash carts and sirens and electric shocks to the chest, but with an empty room, a crisp white bed, silence.","author":"Jacob M. Appel","tags":["death","death-and-dying","health","health-care","hospital","hospitals","jacob-m-appel","medicine","medicine-doctor","silence"],"id":119033,"author_id":"Jacob+M.+Appel"},{"text":"Maybe that is the greatest of wonders: that we can be shaped so much by those we've known closely, and equally by those we've never known at all - and that we too can change the world long after we've left it.","author":"Jacob M. Appel","tags":["change","grandparents","immortal","immortality","jacob-appel","jacob-m-appel","life","posthumous","surpise","survivor","survivors","wonders"],"id":240251,"author_id":"Jacob+M.+Appel"},{"text":"Choose old people for enemies. They die. You win.","author":"Jacob M. Appel","tags":["elderly","elderly-people","humor","humorous","humorous-philosophy","jacob-m-appel","old-people","revenge","senior-citizens","winning"],"id":282724,"author_id":"Jacob+M.+Appel"},{"text":"To the bankrupt poet, to the jilted lover, to anyone who yearns to elude the doubt within and the din without, the tidal strait between Manhattan Island and her favorite suburb offers the specious illusion of easy death. Melville prepared for the plunge from the breakwater on the South Street promenade, Whitman at the railing of the outbound ferry, both men redeemed by some Darwinian impulse, maybe some epic vision, which enabled them to change leaden water into lyric wine. Hart Crane rejected the limpid estuary for the brackish swirl of the Caribbean Sea. In each generation, from Washington Irving’s to Truman Capote’s, countless young men of promise and talent have examined the rippling foam between the nation’s literary furnace and her literary playground, questioning whether the reams of manuscript in their Brooklyn lofts will earn them garlands in Manhattan’s salons and ballrooms, wavering between the workroom and the water. And the city had done everything in its power to assist these men, to ease their affliction and to steer them toward the most judicious of decisions. It has built them a bridge.","author":"Jacob M. Appel","tags":["bankrupt","brooklyn","brooklyn-bridge","east-river","failure","herman-melville","hopelessness","jacob-m-appel","manhattan","melville","new-york-city","suicide","walt-whitman","whitman"],"id":306409,"author_id":"Jacob+M.+Appel"},{"text":"That was the heart of the problem: every choice made sense from some vantage point.","author":"Jacob M. Appel","tags":["tolerance"],"id":339931,"author_id":"Jacob+M.+Appel"},{"text":"Such is the demographic paradox of a junior physician's relationship with his patients: I worry about how to extend their lives. This anxiety inevitably shortens my own.","author":"Jacob M. Appel","tags":["clinician","doctoring","hospital","house-staff","intern","jacob-appel","jacob-m-appel","life","life-extension","medicine","paradox","patient","physician","resident","science"],"id":342663,"author_id":"Jacob+M.+Appel"},{"text":"Know your load. That’s rule numero uno in this business, which is why I make them count the penguins out in front of me one at a time. I’m not going to be the schmuck who shows up in Orlando twobirds short of a dinner party....I know I’m pulling out of Houston with exactly forty-two Gentoo penguins, seventeen Jamaican land iguanas, four tuataras from New Zealand, and a pair of rare, civet-like mammals called linsangs. No more, no less.","author":"Jacob M. Appel","tags":["animals","humor","penguins","truck drivers","zoo"],"id":343076,"author_id":"Jacob+M.+Appel"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":15,"pages":2,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}