Alice Sebold Quotes
Poison and medicine are often the same thing, given in different proportions
Sebold, Alice. The Lovely Bones. Little, Brown and Company, 2002.
This scientific quotation is politically important because it defines the difficult problem of setting acceptable and safe environmental and work standards for air or water quality and contact with potentially toxic substances. As this quotation illustrates, everything is toxic if given in large enough doses. Table salt can kill a human if enough if ingested. Tiny amounts of even a poison will do no harm. What makes setting of standards still more complicated is that human beings differ in the amount of a substance it would take to produce a toxic reaction. Allergies are the best example, but the variability of sensitivity always exists.
Alice Sebold is an American writer and author of three books including her memoir, Lucky (1999), and two fiction novels,The Lovely Bones (2002), and The Almost Moon (2007).
