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“Yes. It was like that. Poor pitiful Mama. You know, I’m like her now. I get mad at everyone because they are working, living. Sometimes I hate you because you’re not dying. Isn’t that awful?” “No, because you can tell me this. And I can tell you I’m glad it’s not me that is dying. But Mama never had a soul to tell anything to....

— A Manual for Cleaning Women by Lucia Berlin (Page 309)

“Do not go gentle into that good night.” I didn’t even like Dylan Thomas.

— A Manual for Cleaning Women by Lucia Berlin (Page 234 - 405)

Chart after chart. Anxiety reaction. Tension headaches. Hyperventilation. Intoxication. Depression. (These are the diagnoses—the patients’ complaints are cancer, heart attack, blood clots, suffocation.) Each of these patients costs hundreds of dollars including ambulance, X-ray, lab work, EKG. The ambulances get a Medi-Cal sticker, we get a Medi-Cal sticker, the doctor gets a Medi-Cal sticker, and the patient dozes off for a while until a taxi comes to take him home, paid for with a voucher. God, have I become as inhuman as Nurse McCoy? Fear, poverty, alcoholism, loneliness are terminal illnesses. Emergencies, in fact.

— A Manual for Cleaning Women by Lucia Berlin (Page 92 - 93)