von Nick Hornby, les ich grade. Über die Schwierigkeiten, gute Menschen zu werden.

Die Protagonistin, eine Ärztin, über Mrs Cortenza, ihre Patientin:

"Her joints hurt, her back hurts, she cannot sleep with the pain, and the painkillers seem no longer to do anything for her, ... Mrs. Cortenza is older than her seventy-three years, and it is her age and a lifetime spent cleaning other people's houses that have damaged her. (Let's face it: these houses belong to people like me, so there is a peculiar circularity in all this. Maybe if we all forgot about being good and saving the world, and just stayed at home and cleaned our own houses, then people like Mrs. Cortenza wouldn't need doctors. Maybe Mrs. Cortenza, thus liberated from her pain and her domestic drudgery, could have got on with anything socially useful. Maybe she would have spent her live teaching adult literacy, or working with teenage runaways, if I hadn't been so hellbent on curing her, and thus never having time to scrub my own floors.)"

Eine wundervolle Parabel. Wir verursachen uns gegenseitig Arbeit! "Jetzt wird wieder in die Hände gespuckt, wir steigern das Bruttosozialprodukt !" ... und "Arbeitsplätze geschaffen"

Es geht auch anders: siehe http://fritzhinterberger.twoday.net/stories/2668976/