Given the ease with which health infuses life with meaning and purpose, it is shocking how swiftly illness steals away those certainties.
-- Elisabeth Tova Bailey (chapter 1)

Importance: This quote relates to the theme of illness in that it characterizes a sense of meaninglessness or purposelessness as a side-effect of being ill. In Elisabeth's case, her inability to get out of bed and engage with the world in any significant way during her illness contributes directly to those feelings. Questions of meaning often bring up larger questions on the purpose of life in general. Survival is an instinct all species share, but are humans the only ones who ever question the larger purpose of being alive? Elisabeth's snail reminds her of the importance of survival and resilience as it fulfills its life cycles in her terrarium and her belief that it has the capacity for thought begs the question of how a snail may or may...