[voiceover] We all get at least one good wish a year over the candles on our birthday. Some of us throw in more, on eyelashes, fountains, lucky stars. And every now and then, one of those wishes come true. So what then? Is it as good as we'd hoped? Do we bask in the warm glow of our happiness or do we just notice we've got a long list of other wishes waiting to be wished.
S5 E11Wish You Were Here
[to Bailey after she complains to him about Arizona Robbins while on peds rotation] Dr. Bailey, you thought Shepherd was just a haircut. You didn't like Hahn and you think Dr. Sloan is a hussy. Can you name any attending that you thought was good?
Seems like you're short of a friend today, so I thought I'd fill in.
Whatever. Colleagues aren't friends, they're competitors.
[to Derek] I'm worried about my hospital dying. I made some calls to replace Kinley. No one wants to come here. I can't keep a cardiac surgeon on staff. Burke quit. Hahn quit. Dixon's autistic. My OR roof collapsed, the whole place flooded. The interns are literally chopping each other into little pieces. No wonder we're number 12. Twelve!
[voiceover] We don't wish for the easy stuff. We wish for big things. Things that are ambitious, out of reach. We wish because we need help and we're scared and we know we may be asking too much. We still wish though... because sometimes they come true.
S5 E12Sympathy For the Devil
[voiceover] My mother used to say this about residency, "It takes a year to learn how to cut. It takes a lifetime to learn not to." Of all of the tools on the surgical tray, sound judgment is the trickiest one to master. And without it, we're all just toddlers running around with ten blades.
Why do you have to live in Meredith's attic? How am I supposed to sneak out of here with that frat party going on downstairs? Don't you kids ever sleep?
They're cleaning the house for Dr. Shepherd's mother.
Mrs. Shepherd's coming... to Seattle?
So?
So that woman practically raised me, taught me right from wrong. If she found that I was... with you, that we were... You're Meredith Grey's little sister. You are forbidden fruit. You are twenty-five. You're a fetus.
Twenty-four. I skipped third grade.
I feel dirty.
Pain and agony for a little bit of pleasure, I get it.
If that's bad, why don't you stop sl— doing what you're doing.
Because it doesn't feel bad when I'm... doing it. It's good. It's great. And maybe if you weren't so scared of getting burnt you'd feel the same.
You know, I used to walk tall around here. I used to walk tall. And then came George. He took off at least an inch, and Erica went and left me that shaved off a few more. I got shorter. All that humiliation, it makes you shorter, so yeah, I am scared of getting hurt, because one more personal disaster right now would cut me off at the knees.
[to Alex] You don't think that I know that they just pulled the plug on the kid? You don't think I get that? You don't think I know about the tiny, tiny coffin they're going to stick him in? I know about the tiny coffins. I see them all the time. In my sleep. So if you don't mind, I'm going to keep talking relationships and rainbows and crap. And I'm going to make plans for tomorrow. Because that's what you do, Karev, you make plans. You have to. You turn your back on the tiny coffins and you face forward, until the next kid.
[voiceover] We're human. We make mistakes. We mis-estimate. We call it wrong. But when a surgeon makes a bad judgment call, it's not as simple. People get hurt. They bleed. So we struggle over every stitch. We agonize over every suture because the snap judgments, the ones that come to us quickly and easily without hesitation, they're the one that haunt us forever.
S5 E13Stairway to Heaven
[voiceover] I believe in heaven. I also believe in hell. I've never seen either, but I believe they exist. They have to exist... because without a heaven, without a hell, we're all just headed for limbo.
Karev, go and get the machine.
What if it's already hooked up to somebody?
If that somebody has more than 16 hours to live, then we'll unhook him.
Dr. Shepherd?
Dr. Bailey.
I need you to stop. I need you to put down the scalpel. This man is trying to kill himself and, God forgive me, I need you to let him.
...
It's your call, Dr. Bailey. It's up to you. Am I an executioner? Or am I a surgeon?
[voiceover] Heaven, hell, limbo, no one really knows where we're going or what's waiting for us when we get there. But the one thing we can say for sure, with absolute certainty, is that there are moments that take us to another place, moments of heaven on earth. And maybe for now, that's all we need to know.
S5 E14Beat Your Heart Out
[voiceover] Any first year med student knows that an increased heart rate is a sign of trouble. A racing heart could indicate anything from a panic disorder to something much, much more serious. A heart that flutters, or one that skips a beat, could be a sign of secret affliction or it could indicate romance which is the biggest trouble of all.
These quotes come from Wikiquote's Grey's Anatomy pages and are available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.