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.
What the woman who labors wants is the right to live, not simply exist β the right to life as the rich woman has the right to life, and the sun and music and art. You have nothing that the humblest worker has not a right to have also. The worker must have bread, but she must have roses, too. Help, you women of privilege, give her the ballot to fight with.
With reasonable men, I will reason; with humane men I will plead; but to tyrants I will give no quarter, nor waste arguments where they will certainly be lost.
It was just him and me. He fought with honor. If it weren't for his honor, he and the others would have beaten me together. They might have killed me, then. His sense of honor saved my life. I didn't fight with honor . . . I fought to win.
I too am compelled to carry the gospel of freedom beyond my particular hometown.
If we wish to free ourselves from enslavement, we must choose freedom and the responsibility this entails.
It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.
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