How we cite our quotes: (Part.Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
"Marion, remember the Eleventh Commandment," he said. "Thou shall not operate on the day of a patient's death." (P.25)
Stone's advice to Marion is an allusion to the Bible's Ten Commandments. It's as though doctors have their own set of God-given rules, and this one is more about saving the doctor than saving the patient. It's about knowing when to give up and when to recognize that the doctor's powers are limited.
Quote #2
As she bent over the child she realized that the tragedy of death had to do entirely with what was left unfulfilled. (1.3.54)
Hema has an epiphany on the airplane heading back to Addis Ababa after her vacation in India. She realizes that she does, after many years without knowing it, want to have a child. For her, it's about cheating death: if she were to die in a plane crash with no descendants, her life would not go on in the form of her children.
Quote #3
She was already in appalling shape, pale and clammy, her pulse so thready that he believed anything he did would send her over the precipice. (1.4.16)
In this quote, life and death are given a spatial dimension. The precipice (which is a steep cliff) is a metaphor for the division between the two states, and Sister Mary Joseph Praise is teetering on the edge of it like a boulder hanging over Wile E. Coyote's head.