When a sentence from a journal article you read years back gets lodged in your brain, the writer is probably onto something. Two sentences I can quote almost verbatim, for instance, came from Rosalie A. Kane, a gerontologist at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health and a leading teacher, researcher and thinker about aging and long-term care.
“Embedded in most of our rules and regulations in the idea that L.T.C. should aspire to the best possible quality of life as is consistent with health and safety,” Dr. Kane wrote in The Gerontologist a decade ago. (The italics are hers.) “But ordinary people may prefer the best health and safety outcomesthat are consistent with a meaningful quality of life.”