Quotes & Sayings About Autopsy

Only when he was conducting an autopsy could he forget the death of his beloved son. Ironically, playing with dead bodies released him from the death that had touched him. — Koji Suzuki

Get inches from the mirror and tell yourself what happened. Give yourself the news like an autopsy. At 10:02 on Saturday, he discarded you. At oh-nine-hundred-hours, you were overlooked. At whatever time of whenever day, it didn't work, and it wasn't what you thought, and it left you in the ash and the rain. Cry and holler and selectively remember whatever it is you want. It will be whatever you want. — Kelton Wright

As far as specific bands from the 90s death metal era, I love Death, Carcass, Possessed, Morbid Angel, Gorguts, Autopsy, Atheist, etc. — David Pajo

It seemed to Bosch to be a form of torture heaped upon torture. Corazon was hunched over the steel table, her bloody and gloved hands deep inside the gutted torso, working with forceps and a long-bladed instrument she called the "butter knife." Corazon was not tall and she stood on her tiptoes to be able to reach down and in with her tools. She braced her hip against the side of the autopsy table to gain leverage. — Michael Connelly

Nobody wants to conduct an autopsy on a dead saint. — Robert Charles Wilson

We'll see what comes out of the autopsy. Obviously there's no problem getting hold of a knife at this hotel, if it was someone from here who attacked him. — Arnaldur Indridason

That made me think I could contribute more to society by looking at people on the autopsy table and feeding back the findings so that lots of people could benefit, rather than just treating patients one at a time. — Michael Baden

An unusual problem developed when a case of smallpox was brought to the hospital. Smallpox was too contagious to be allowed on the wards. Its victims had to be specially isolated. But where? Osler drove the patient up to the mayor of Hamilton's home, a sure way of getting action. Special accommodation was arranged in a secluded house. Osler visited the patient twice a day until he died, and then did an autopsy on the spot, helped by the German housekeeper. — Michael Bliss

When performing an autopsy, even the most inveterate spiritualist would have to question where the soul is. — Anton Chekhov

In Montreal spring is like an autopsy. Everyone wants to see the inside of the frozen mammoth. Girls rip off their sleeves and the flesh is sweet and white, like wood under green bark. From the streets a sexual manifesto rises like an inflating tire, the winter has not killed us again! — Leonard Cohen

The family indeed is dead, if what we mean by it is the modern family system in which units comprised of male breadwinner and female homemaker, married couples, and their offspring dominate the land. But its ghost, the ideology of the family, survives to haunt the consciousness of all those who refuse to confront it. It is time to perform a social autopsy on the corpse of the modern family system so that we may try to lay its troublesome spirit to rest. — Judith Stacey

ATTORNEY: Doctor, before you performed the autopsy, did you check for a pulse? WITNESS: No. ATTORNEY: Did you check for blood pressure? WITNESS: No. ATTORNEY: Did you check for breathing? WITNESS: No. ATTORNEY: So, then it is possible that the patient was alive when you began the autopsy? WITNESS: No. ATTORNEY: How can you be so sure, Doctor? WITNESS: Because his brain was sitting on my desk in a jar. ATTORNEY: I see, but could the patient have still been alive, nevertheless? WITNESS: Yes, it is possible that he could have been alive and practicing law. ***** — Krisanta Bella

I was at our beautiful home in Martha's Vineyard, near Boston, sitting on the porch looking at the ocean when I got a phone called and was asked, 'Would I like to do 'CSI'?' A week later, I'm at a coroner's office in Las Vegas, participating in a quadruple autopsy. — Ted Danson

That's it,' Shelby said as they ran along behind Raven. 'From now on no one's dead until I read the autopsy report.'

'Such a report could be faked,' Wing observed.

'Hey, only people who haven't come back from the grave get to have an opinion,' Shelby said quickly. 'So that counts you out, zombie boy.'

'Strictly speaking I am not a zombie since I did not actually die,' Wing said. As usual it was impossible to tell if he was joking or not. — Mark Walden

You can tell if the person is beautiful inside after the autopsy — Haresh Daswani

Precisely. Stark was the real deal. Yes, the chance that he could physically harm someone was non-existent, but his intellect meant he could get inside your head. To me, his mind was his most dangerous weapon." "You make him sound like Hannibal Lecter," Joe said with a smile. "Hannibal Lecter is fictional. Obadiah Stark was very real and very dangerous. A sociopath such as him had no desire to be understood or psychologically dissected so that his motivations could be rationalised. He lived to kill, pure and simple. His level of intelligence made him impenetrable to any standard test one would use to perform a psychological autopsy, but it had no bearing on his actions. You could argue someone with such a high IQ would know that killing is wrong, but — David McCaffrey

You're saying I am not a credible eyewitness," Lowen repeated. "Because I was part of that diplomatic mission, Mr. Vinicius. In fact, not only was I there, I also conducted the autopsy that established that Liu Cong's death was murder, and also helped identify how it was the murder was accomplished. When you say that the eyewitness reports are not credible, you're talking about me, specifically and directly. If what you're saying actually reflects the opinion of the Ministry of External Relations, then we have a problem. A very large problem. — John Scalzi

Some ghosts should remain good and buried, Niece. — Kerri Maniscalco

I sat in a room the color of egg yolk for two hours while the officer got my story down. The whole time I was thinking about Natalie going to autopsy, and how I would like to sneak in and put a fresh Band-Aid on her knee. — Gillian Flynn

If you do an autopsy on an 85-year-old who died of a stroke, you will find five other things that person was about to die from. — S. Jay Olshansky

The autopsy had shown a perfectly sound organ, surrounded by perfectly sound organs. — Gerald Heard

A disease which new and obscure to you, Doctor, will be known only after death; and even then not without an autopsy will you examine it with exacting pains. But rare are those among the extremely busy clinicians who are willing or capable of doing this correctly. — Herman Boerhaave

An SJH, in ballistics shorthand. It was a brutally efficient piece of ordnance. Not exactly a dum-dum, named after Dum-Dum, India, where a British army officer had invented a bullet that mushroomed out on impact and acted as a miniature wrecking ball inside the body. Innovation wasn't always good for you. The .45 SJH had blown right through the front of Cassie Decker's skull and ended up lodged deep in her brain. It had been dug out of her during the autopsy and the slug preserved as evidence in her murder investigation. It had retained enough of its shape — David Baldacci

If America's soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read Vietnam. It can never be saved so long as it destroys the hopes of men the world over. — Martin Luther King Jr.

Best autopsy ever," said Rook. "I think I just peed myself a little. Seriously, I did. — Richard Castle

Diamonds were everything I hoped to be; beautiful, yet containing unimaginable strength. — Kerri Maniscalco

No one around me was doing anything, even making conversation. They were all just perfectly inert, laid out prone or supine as if submitting to autopsy or dissection. Only the dead or the lowest of species can bask, I'm convinced. — Joshua Cohen

The point is, the only real tools we have are our eyes and our heads. It's not the act of seeing with our eyes alone; it's correctly comprehending what we see. Treating life as an autopsy. — Warren Ellis

autopsy results?" "Natural causes," Cooper said. "Mrs. Owen was very ill and had a heart attack." Riley nodded. "Consistent with our findings." Lamond — Pamela Callow

I taped the autopsy photos from Marilyn Monroe's death to my lunch box in fifth grade, and I would write stories in which someone inevitably died. — Karin Slaughter

What must it be like, knowing you raised the devil? It probably felt the same as knowing you sat by a monster day in and day out, never noticing the blackness of his soul. — Kerri Maniscalco

Odd Thing to Read After an Autopsy: "He was in much better health than we expected." Well, yeah ... except for the DEAD part. — Teresa Medeiros

Unlike real tissue, human tissue simulant doesn't snap back: The cavity remains, allowing ballistics types to judge, and preserve a record of, a bullet's performance. Plus, you don't need to autopsy a block of human tissue simulant; because it's clear, you just walk up to it after you've shot it and take a look at the damage. Following which, you can take it home, eat it, and enjoy stronger, healthier nails in thirty days. — Mary Roach

The autopsy took place in the morning and was the best argument for the buddy systemI had ever seen. Never live alone, I told myself. Before you chane a lightbulb, call someone from the other room and have him watch until you are finished. — David Sedaris

They never look very big on the table, the bodies. It's built to accommodate the largest frames, there's that. And they're naked. But it's something else. That parcel of the being called the soul-weighing twenty-one grams, according to the experiments of the American doctor Duncan MacDougall-takes up a surprising amount of space, like aloud voice. In its absence, the body seems to shrink — Yann Martel

My notebook was filled with images of things a lady had no business being fascinated by, yet I couldn't control my curiosity. — Kerri Maniscalco

Shave a gorilla and it would be almost impossible, at twenty paces, to distinguish him from a heavyweight champion of the world. Skin a chimpanzee, and it would take an autopsy to prove he was not a theologian. — H.L. Mencken

Autopsies give us the facts but not the truth. — Richard Selzer

What a magnificent body, how I should like to see it on the dissecting table. — Ivan Turgenev

Holy tit fungus! Did you give Sasquatch an autopsy in here? God almighty, girl." He waddled back into the hallway, this time holding his privates with both hands. "You balded the dick mitten. Nice. Let me see it."
He looked at her like she might drop trou simply because he suggested it.
"I would rather lick a monkey's armpit than show you my vagina." Dove gave him the finger.
"You know what I love best about a naked muff hole? It looks just like a camel's dangly lips." Duke extended his own lips to make them appear gummy and slack. — Debra Anastasia

There was no direct way to prevent the Boston murders. There are some easy ways to prevent likely future ones: by not inciting them. That's also true of another case of a suspect murdered, his body disposed of without autopsy, when he could easily have been apprehended and brought to trial: Osama bin Laden. — Noam Chomsky

A woman who'd lost her first son
consoled us with an angel gone ahead
to pray for our family
gone into that sky
seeking oxygen,
gone into autopsy — Michael S. Harper

When I was seventeen you said you wanted to perform an autopsy on me, to crack open my ribcage and squeeze my heart until it burst between your fingers." What is that - if not flirting? She lifts her head off a pillow to near me, propping her elbows on the mattress. "That was me hating you, Richard. I dreamed of your death." "You dreamed of clutching my heart," I rebut. "Of killing you," she emphasizes. I lean closer to her, our eyes locking. "Vous m'aimiez." You loved me. — Becca Ritchie

The rule was "no autopsy, no foul". — Stewart Granger

What gives my books authenticity is that I actually do what it is I'm writing about. I think the fact that I am in the autopsy room, I go to the crime scene and I do work in the lab gives my books this flavor that otherwise they wouldn't have. — Kathy Reichs

Don't blow smoke up my ass. You'll ruin my autopsy — William Parrish

I hear the police did a biopsy."
"You mean autopsy," I said.
"Whatever. — Suzanne M. Trauth

I'm completely demanding an autopsy on my grandmother's brain when she's dead so I can see what I'm in for as I age. — Meg Cabot

You know that movie, where the little boy says 'I see dead people'?
The Sixth Sense.
Well, I see them all the time, and I'm getting tired of it. That's what's ruined my mood. Here it is, almost Christmas, and I didn't even think about putting up a tree, because I'm still seeing the autopsy lab in my head. I'm still smelling it on my hands. I come home on a day like this, after two postmortems, and I can't think about cooking dinner. I can't even look at a piece of meat without thinking of muscle fibers. All I can deal with is a cocktail. And then I pour the drink and smell the alcohol, and suddenly there I am, back in the lab. Alcohol, formalin, they both have that same sharp smell. — Tess Gerritsen

Their minds were crying out to be set free, but they refused to unbind them. — Kerri Maniscalco

Now Steffi - I'd done okay through most of the autopsy, but right about then I started feeling decidedly chuck-upsy. — Stephen King

She had thought he was dead, or at least not totally alive, and you could not still be dating someone you believe had an autopsy, so it was not really cheating. — Thomm Quackenbush

I need to know when,' he said, 'In this case when is more important than how. Do you have a time-table?' For although images of this murder now surrounded him, and the parts of the body had become emblems of pursuit, violence and flight, they were as broken and indistinct as the sounds of a quarrel in a locked room. — Peter Ackroyd

I'll bet my autopsy reveals my mouth is too big. — Bill Watterson

What is a man's soul made of that a woman's is not? — Kerri Maniscalco

At the morgue, people were so desensitized that they would eat lunch in the glass walled room adjacent to the autopsy room. A viewing room. Because it had the best air conditioning in the building. So they would eat in there and maybe somebody would come in who had been found after being dead for three days and they would say: That is the exact purple I want for those drapes in the study. They didn't miss a beat. They could eat through anything. — David Sedaris

Some days you wake up changed. This was one for Starling, she could tell. What she had seen yesterday at the Potter Funeral Home had caused in her a small tectonic shift. Starling had studied psychology and criminology in a good school. In her life she had seen some of the hideously offhand ways in which the world breaks things. But she hadn't really known, and now she knew: sometimes the family of man produces, behind a human face, a mind whose pleasure is what lay on the porcelain table at Potter, West Virginia, in the room with the cabbage roses. Starling's first apprehension of that mind was worse than anything she could see on the autopsy scales. The knowledge would lie against her skin forever, — Thomas Harris

And so is another question that Sanderson's experience leads him to discuss: whether the mind is identical with the brain. He mentions a case of a man who died in a New York hospital, and who an autopsy revealed to have no brain, only "half a cupful of dirty water". This sounds, admittedly, like another of those absurd stories that are not worth discussing. But in the early 1980s Professor John Lourber of Sheffield University discovered a student with an IQ of 126 whose head was entirely filled with "water". A brain scan showed that the student's brain was merely an outer layer, only one millimetre thick. How can a person function with virtually no brain? Lourber, who specializes in hydrocephalis ("water on the brain") replies that he has come across many cases of perfectly normal people whose heads are filled with 95 per cent of fluid, and that 70 to 90 per cent is actually quite common. — Colin Wilson

A friend told me to listen to my heart. Another friend told me to listen to my gut. Maybe I need an autopsy, because right now my colon is kind of iffy. — Paul Reiser

It wasn't until I had performed by first autopsy that I realized that even the drabest human exteriors could contain the most beautiful viscera. After that, I would console myself for the plainness of my fellow bus-riders by dissecting them in my imagination. — John B. S. Haldane

The next time I opened my eyes, I was in the morgue.
This, all by itself, is enough to really ruin your day.
I was lying on the examining table, and Butters, complete with his surgical gown and his tray of autopsy instruments, stood over me.
'I'm not dead!' I sputtered. 'I'm not dead!'
- Harry Dresden, Death Masks, Jim Butcher — Jim Butcher

Dear Mr. Devil, Sir Satan, Lord Lucifer, and all other crosses you bear,
I cordially invite you to Breathed, Ohio. Land of hills and hay bales, of sinners and forgivers.
May you come in peace.
With great faith,
Autopsy Bliss — Tiffany McDaniel

Yes. I did more research than I ever wanted to and saw some things I wish I didn't. I went on ride-alongs, spent time with Homicide, Cold Case, and SVU detectives, hung out in subways learning how to spot pervs and pick-pockets, viewed an autopsy, went to a police firing range, and witnessed court cases and I read, read, read. — Mariska Hargitay

In 1996 Hubacek had been driving drunk at 100 mph with no headlights. He crashed into a van carrying a married couple and their nanny. The husband and the nanny were killed. Poe sentenced Hubacek to 110 days of boot camp, and to carry a sign once a month for ten years in front of high schools and bars that read, I KILLED TWO PEOPLE WHILE DRIVING DRUNK, and to erect a cross and a Star of David at the scene of the crash and to keep it maintained, and to keep photographs of the victims in his wallet for ten years, and to send $10 every week for ten years to a memorial fund in the names of the victims, and to observe the autopsy of a person killed in a drink-driving accident. — Jon Ronson

Always foster and grow that unquenchable curiosity of yours." I smiled. That was a promise I fully intended to keep. — Kerri Maniscalco

Did you finish yours, Kota?"
"Working on it now, Actually."
"How's it going?"
He sat up, turning in his chair and holding up his notebook. "I don't know. What rhymes with formaldehyde?"
My eyes widened. Gabriel laughed, rubbing his fingers against his forehead. "Dude, what kind of poem are you writing?"
Kota blinked at us. "It's about a doctor."
"Does the doctor fall in love?" Gabriel asked.
"No."
"Does someone die?"
"Not in the story, technically."
"What does he do?"
"He performs an autopsy. — C.L.Stone

The marriage is over; counseling is the eulogy. The relationship autopsy is the wake. — Suzanne Finnamore

This is the place where death rejoices to help those who live. It's written somewhere in every morgue I've ever been in. Nice way of looking at it, isn't it? — Jane Casey

A rather insistent cross-examiner asks a pathologist whether he can be absolutely sure that a certain patient was dead before he began the autopsy. The pathologist says he's absolutely certain. Oh, but how can you be so sure? Because, the pathologist says, his brain was in a jar sitting on my desk. But, says the cross-examiner, could the patient still have been alive nevertheless? Well, comes the answer, it's possible he could have been alive and practicing law somewhere. — Ian McEwan