“My sense is that the wonderful technology that we have to visualize the inside of the body often leaves physicians feeling that the exam is a waste of time and so they may shortchange the ritual.”

In an emergency, what treatment is given by ear? Words of Comfort.

The Country Doctor Revisited captures the trials and tribulations of medicine, but also the satisfaction and the extraordinary rewards that come to those who embrace such a practice.

We are all fixing what is broken. It is the task of a lifetime. We’ll leave much unfinished for the next generation.

Geography is destiny.

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.

The true measure of a career is to be able to be content, even proud, that you succeeded through your own endeavors without leaving a trail of casualties in your wake.

I’m looking at offering biblical holiness, not an unrealistic expectation for people that will leave them disappointed.

When your kids turn 13, an alien being invades their bodies and doesn’t leave until they’re 20.

What then are doing if not creating a better place together? I think, for me the key has to be, what do I want to create? What is it I want to leave behind?

But it’s a poor church that cares only for what happens to a soul after it leaves this life.” -Damien

There’s no leaving Edinburgh, No shifting it around: it stays with you, always.

It leaves him free to commit the same deed over and over again, and may, indeed, win him the honors of a hero in the country of his victims.

You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition.