Meredith Grey quotes from Grey's Anatomy

Meredith

[voiceover] Sometimes the past is something you just can't let go of. And sometimes the past is something we'll do anything to forget. And sometimes we learn something new about the past that changes everything we know about the present.

Meredith

[voiceover] The best gift I ever got was for Christmas when I was ten – my very first suture kit. I used it until my fingers bled, and then I tried to use it to stitch up my fingers. It put me on the path to becoming a surgeon. My point is sometimes the best gifts come in really surprising packages.

Meredith

[voiceover] Everyday we get to give the gift of life, it can be painful, it can be terrifying, but in the end it's worth it. Every time. We all have the opportunity to give. Maybe the gifts are not as dramatic as what happens in the operating room, maybe the gift is to try and make a simple apology, maybe it's to understand another person’s point of view, maybe it's to hold a secret for a friend. The joy supposedly is in the giving, so when the joy is gone, when the giving starts to feel more like a burden, that's when you stop. But if you're like most people I know, you give till it hurts, and then you give some more.

Meredith

[voiceover] We assume the really serious changes in our lives happen slowly, over time. But it's not true. The big stuff happens in an instant. Becoming an adult. Becoming a parent. Becoming a doctor. One minute, you're not, and the next... you are. Ask any doctor, and they can point to the one moment they become a physician. It usually isn't med school graduation day. Whatever it is... nobody forgets it. Sometimes you don't even know anything's changed. You think you're still you and your life is still your life but you wake up one day and you look around and you don't recognize anything. Not anything at all.

Meredith

[voiceover] You never forget the moment that you become a doctor. A switch flips. Suddenly, you're not playing dress-up anymore. You own the white coat. What you may not notice is the moment that being a doctor... changes you.

Meredith

[voiceover] In surgery, the healing process begins with a cut, an incision, the tearing of flesh. We have to damage the healthy flesh in order to expose the unhealthy. It feels cruel and against common sense, but it works. You risk exposure for the sake of healing, and when it's over, once the incision has been closed, you wait. You wait and you hope that your patient will heal. That you haven't in fact, just made everything worse.

Meredith

[voiceover] The surgical scalpel is made of sterilized, carbonized stainless steel. This is a vast improvement over the first scalpel, which was pretty much a sharp stick. Medicine is constantly reinventing itself, that means surgeons have to keep reinventing themselves too. There's constant pressure to adapt to changes. It can be a painful process. But without it, you'll find yourself moving backwards instead of forwards.

Meredith

[voiceover] We have to keep reinventing ourselves almost every minute because the world can change in an instant, and there's no time for looking back. Sometimes the changes are forced on us, sometimes they happen by accident, and we make the most of them. We have to constantly come up with new ways to fix ourselves. So we change, we adapt, we create new versions of ourselves. We just need to be sure that this one is an improvement over the last.

Meredith

[voiceover] Surgeons are detail-oriented. We like statistics and checklists and operating procedures. Our patients live because we enjoy following the steps but as much as we love to always rely on the numbers, the plan we also know that some of the greatest medical discoveries have happened by accident. Mold: Penicilin. Poisonous tree bark: a cure for Malaria, a little blue pill for high blood pressure, impotence be damned. It's hard for us to accept that it's not always the hard work or attention to detail that will get us the answers we're looking for. But sometimes we just have to sit back, relax and wait for happy accident.

Meredith

[voiceover] No matter how many plans we make or steps we follow, we never know how our day is going to end up. We'd prefer to know, of course, what curveballs will be thrown our way. It's the accidents that always turn out to be the most interesting parts of our day, of life, the people we never expected to show up, a turn of events we never would have chosen for ourselves. All of a sudden you find yourself somewhere you never expected to be and it's nice, or it takes some getting used to. Still, you know you'll find yourself appreciating it somewhere down the line. So, you go to sleep each night thinking about tomorrow, going over your plans, preparing your lists, and hoping that whatever accidents come your way will be happy ones.

Meredith

[voiceover] Surgeons aren't complacent people. We don't put our feet up. We don't sit still. Whatever the game is, we like to win. And once we win, we get a new game. We push ourselves; residents, attendings. It doesn't matter how much we achieve. If you're a climber there's always another mountain.

Meredith

[voiceover] They take pictures of mountain climbers at the top of a mountain. They're smiling, ecstatic, triumphant. They don't take pictures along the way cos who wants to remember the rest of it. We push ourselves because we have to, not because we like it. The relentless climb, the pain and anguish of taking it to the next level. Nobody takes pictures of that. Nobody wants to remember. We just wanna remember the view from the top. The breathtaking moment at the edge of the world. That's what keeps us climbing. And it's worth the pain. That's the crazy part. It's worth anything.

Meredith

[voiceover] Psychologists believe that every aspect of our lives, all our thought processes & behavior patterns, are the direct result of our relationship to our parents. That every relationship that we have is really just another version of that first relationship. It's just us trying over and over again to get it right.

Meredith

[voiceover] It's the most important job in the world. You probably should need a license to do it, but then most of us wouldn't even pass the written exam. Some people are naturals. They were born to do it. Some have other gifts. But the good news is biology dictates you don't have to do it alone. You can waste your whole life wondering, but the only way to find out what kind of parent you'd be is to finally stop talking about it and just do it.

Meredith

[voiceover] We're doctors - we're trained to care for human beings and we're pretty sure we know what to look for. Cuts, infection, genetic mutation.