“According to Shiva, life is in the end about fixing holes. Shiva didn’t speak in metaphors. fixing holes is precisely what he did.”

Your job is to preserve yourself, not to descend into their hole. It’s a relief when you arrive at this place, the point of absurdity, because then you are free, you owe them nothing.

She felt the familiar calmness of an emergency, but she understood the falseness of that feeling, now that it was her life at stake.

You live it forward, but understand it backward.

The process of learning huge volumes of information about disease, of learning a specialised language, can ironically make one lose sight of the patient one came to serve;.

I believe in black holes. I believe that as the universe empties into nothingness, past and future will smack together in the last swirl around the drain.

Though I am fascinated by knowledge, I am even more fascinated by wisdom.

Pray tell us, what’s your favorite number?”… “Shiva jumped up to the board, uninvited, and wrote 10,213,223″… “

Life for the Italians was what it was, no more and no less, an interlude between meals

She had always assumed that she would have years to sort out the meaning of life…

I grew up and I found my purpose and it was to become a physician.

They realize the no money, no church service, no eulogy, no funeral procession no matter how elaborate, can remove the legacy of a mean spirit.

A discourse that begins at a book club in a living room, but then spreads. That is meaningful to me.

Being the first born gives you great patience.

Yesterday misspent can’t be recall’d Vanity makes beauty contemptible Wisdom is more valuable than riches.

No matter what ailed you, you went to see the barber surgeon who wound up cupping you, bleeding you, purging you.

I was angry with myself because I still loved her, or at least I loved that dream of our togetherness. My feelings were unreasonable, irrational, and I couldn’t change them. That hurt.

Who hesitate and falter life away, and lose tomorrow the ground won today.

No matter how strong a condom is, it won’t protect you from a broken heart.

Weep bitterly over the dead, for he is worthy, and then comfort thyself; drive heaviness away: thou shall not do him good, but hurt thyself.

Fill all the spaces between the broken pieces of you – with patience.

Transient emptiness over irreparable brokenness.

A smile made of promises and a heart made of broken chains. She was a beautiful contradiction.

I found my old diary tonight. A brokenness I had forgotten pen pressured so deep it punctured page. I ran my fingers over my words and there inside ridges black I found a little girl desperate for someone to save her, desperate for the very woman I have become.

As a broken microphone cannot broadcast a message, so a restless mind cannot transmit prayers to God