Maybe she would have done more good as a playwright than as a doctor, after all — clichés were like plaque in the arteries of the imagination, they clogged the sense of what was possible. Maybe if enough people had worked to demolish clichés, the world wouldn't have ended.

With each beat, the heart pumps nearly three ounces of blood into the arteries--seventy-five to ninety gallons an hour when the body is at rest.