[voiceover] We all remember the bed time stories of our childhoods. The shoe fits Cinderella, the frog turns into a prince, sleeping beauty is awakened with a kiss. Once upon a time and then they lived happily ever after. Fairy tales, the stuff of dreams. The problem is, fairy tales don't come true. It's the other stories, the ones that begin with dark and stormy nights and end in the unspeakable. It's the nightmares that always seem to become reality. The person that invented the phrase "Happily ever after" should have his ass kicked, so hard!
S5 E1Dream A Little Dream Of Me
[Seattle Grace has just been ranked 12th in the national rankings.]
Humiliating.
Yeah.
12? You're the best neurosurgeon in the country.
Thank you.
In the world. [Derek looks at him] Don't you want to say anything nice about me?
Uh, you're the best plastics guy at Seattle Grace.
[sarcastically] Nice, really nice.
Don't force me to praise you.
You know what I think? I think that number 12 ranking was a mistake. I think it was a clerical error and I'm gonna start making calls about it as soon as I get out of this surgery.
So, I've been observing teaching styles. Shepherd likes to teach by thinking out loud. Bailey is blunt and direct and doesn't over teach and Sloan, well, Sloan just likes to berate and humiliate.
I think if you really want to learn about teaching, you should talk to your students, find out how they learn best.
Mer, why do you care what I think?
Because you're my person. And if I'm gonna do this with him - be whole and healthy and be a warm, gooey person who lives with a boy, I need you. I need you on board. I need you to cheer me on. Because you're the only one who... knows me, darkly, really knows me. I need you to pretend that I can do this, even if you don't believe. Because if you abandon me now, I will never make it, and I'll never get my happy ending, and then that's just––
Life.
I'm saying please here.
I think you and Derek will make it. You'll make it work.
[voiceover] Once upon a time, happily ever after. The stories we tell are the stuff of dreams. Fairy tales don't come true. Reality is much stormier. Much murkier. Much scarier. Reality it's so much more interesting than living happily ever after.
S5 E3Here Comes the Flood
[voiceover] As surgeons we are trained to fix what's broken. The breaking point is our starting line...at work. But in our lives the breaking point is a sign of weakness and we'll do everything we can to avoid it.
You can see the remaining tumors easily identified here.
Her liver looks so healthy.
That's the beauty of general surgery. See badness surrounded by goodness. Cut out the badness, all's right with the world. It's just you and your scalpel, one on one, mano a mano.
[to Lexie, at the bar] Photographic memory, huh? [pause] Periodic table. Go.
Hydrogen, helium, lithium, beryllium, boron, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, fluorine, neon, sodium, magnesium, aluminum, silicon, phosphorus, sulfur. I can keep going.
[to her shrink in the elevator] What was the point? All those hours and all that money? What's the point? The world is a horrible place. Young people die of diseases. It makes absolutely no sense to try to be happy in a world that's such a horrible place.
[to Meredith] Yes.
What?
Yes, horrible things do happen. Happiness in the face of all of that, that's not the goal. Feeling the horrible and knowing that you're not gonna die from those feelings, that's the point. [she stops the elevator] And you're not done. You've made progress because you're feeling and you're telling me about it. Six months ago, it would have been just you and a bottle of tequila. My door is always open.
[voiceover] Bones break. Organs burst. Flesh tears. We can sew the flesh, repair the damage, ease the pain. But when life breaks down when we break down there's no science. No hard and fast rules. We just have to feel our way through. And to a surgeon there's nothing worse, and there's nothing better.
S5 E4Brave New World
[voiceover] In 6500 BC, some guy looked at his sick friend and said "I have an idea, why don't I drill a hole in your skull? It will make you feel better." And thus surgery was born. It takes a certain brand of crazy to come up with an idea like drilling into someone's skull, but surgeons have always been a confident bunch. We usually know what we're doing, and we don't, we still act like we do. We walk boldly into undiscovered country, plant a flag and start ordering people around. It's invigorating and terrifying.
[Izzie knocks on Meredith's door and Derek answers half naked]
Where's Mer?
She's not here.
Oh. So you're just in there by yourself?
I'm not. I'm--I'm waiting for her.
Love the outfit.
What do you want?
I need cash. I ordered a pizza and Alex owes me 20 bucks, but he's not speaking to me because I saw him crying over his crazy girlfriend and there was a minute a week ago that I actually thought he was gonna be a human being and now he won't open the door.
Run into the bathroom. Just go. Go! [Izzie hides in the bathroom] Karev! Give me a twenty.
[Alex grudgingly comes out of his room hands him a $20 note and leaves.]
Thank you. [hands the $20 to Izzie]
That was so awesome. Very cool. Not that I didn't think you were cool before, but, you know, I did not. I kinda just thought you were all hair and... [looks at Derek's lower half] you know. Now, cool. [Derek snickers] You want to share some pizza?
[Izzie finds out that Alex "stole" her patient.]
[seethes] You son of a bitch.
[smirks] Go cry to somebody who cares.
This is my case. It isn't fair.
Surgery's like the Wild West. You didn't get your claim in Montana from the bank. You got it 'cause you put a fence around it and shot the ass off anyone who walked by. Karev's a cowboy. You're not.
[to Meredith] You lie to me again about your experience and the next heart you see will be your own as I cut it out of your chest with a steak knife.
[voiceover] We like to think we're fearless, eager to explore unknown lands and soak up new experiences, but the fact is, we're always terrified. Maybe the terror is part of the attraction. Some people go to horror movies. We cut things open. Dive into dark water. And at the end of the day, isn't that what you'd rather to hear about? If you've got one drink and one friend and 45 minutes. Slow rides make for boring stories. A little calamity, that's worth talking about.
These quotes come from Wikiquote's Grey's Anatomy pages and are available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.