“At times, with today’s advances in technology, medicine in rural America looks very like it does in America’s cities, but the variety of practices is enormous.”

The key to your happiness is to own your slippers, own who you are, own how you look, own your family, own the talents you have, and own the ones you don’t.

A rich man’s faults are covered with money, but a surgeon’s faults are covered with earth.

I think America is really in denial about the degree to which residents, particularly foreign medical graduates, man the county hospitals of this country, and but for their services, I’m not sure how exactly we could manage.

My intent wasn’t to save the world as much as to heal myself. Few doctors will admit this, certainly not young ones, but subconsciously, in entering the profession

Why settle for ‘Three Blind Mice’ when you can can play the ‘Gloria’? No, not Bach’s ‘Gloria.’ Yours! Your ‘Gloria’ lives within you.

What treatment in an emergency is administered by ear?

Why is my leg broken on the ski trip and not anyone else’s?’ And I think that medicine has done a terrible job of addressing that spiritual violation.

In writing, as in medicine, there are no short cuts. You need stamina.

If ‘ecstasy’ meant the sudden intrusion of the sacred into the ordinary, then it had just happened to me.

Be careful! Travel expands the mind and loosens the bowels.

I love to read poetry but I haven’t written anything that I’m willing to show anybody.

We know the average American physician interrupts their patient in 14 seconds.

I’m a great believer in geography being destiny.

Another day in paradise’ was his inevitable pronouncement when he settled his head on his pillow. Now I understand what that meant: the uneventful day was a precious gift.

The world turns on our every action, and our every omission, whether we know it or not.

As she bent over the child she realized that the tragedy of death had to do entirely with what was left unfulfilled.

I’m the most antimedication person, but some people need medicine, and there was a time where I needed some too.

I take a hiatus every now and again, but I’m not good at that.

They legalized alcohol, they legalized tobacco. What is it gonna hurt to legalize this medicinal, medical marijuana that’s used for purposes of cataracts?

Prayer is a very precious medicine, one that certainly helps and never fails, if you will only use it.

I’ve been in these tabloids for 14 years now, and at some point you just become a Zen master of it all.

Elizabeth Taylor’s so fat she puts mayonnaise on aspirin.

Medicine is the keystone of the arch of socialism.

Medicine sometimes snatches away health, sometimes gives it.