Oh, this faithless world! Someone must deliver them. You. If not you, who? You have been saved for a reason. Show them the old demons. Remind them of… - Dan Brown

It seemed no amount of praying could diminish the plague’s wrath. By the time city officials realized it was the rats that were causing the disease, it was too late, but Venice still enforced a decree by which all incoming vessels had to anchor offshore for a full forty days before they would be permitted to unload. To this day, the number forty — quaranta in Italian — served as a grim reminder of the origins of the word quarantine.

Learning the truth has become my life's love.

Denial is a critical part of the human coping mechanism. Without it, we would all wake up terrified every morning about all the ways we could die. Instead, our minds block out our existential fears by focusing on stresses we can handle — like getting to work on time or paying our taxes.