“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.”

A beautiful literary collection that tells of today’s country doctor, somewhat removed from our romantic black-bag image of days gone by, but still fulfilling an essential need in caring for spread-out populations.

There are moments as a teacher when I’m conscious that I’m trotting out the same exact phrase my professor used with me years ago.

To be around someone whose self-confidence is more than what our first glance led us to expect is seductive.

When I wake to the gift of yet another sunrise my first thought is to rouse him and say, I owe you the sight of morning.

…guilt leads to righteous action, but rarely is it the right action.

Students undergo a conversion in the third year of medical school – not pre-clinical to clinical, but pre-cynical to cynical.

By visiting patients in their home, by helping them come to terms with their illness, I could heal when I could not cure.

She died chasing greatness and never saw it each time it was in her hand, so she kept seeking it elsewhere, but never understood the work required to get it or to keep it.

Sandip Roy has broken new ground in this tale of the modern Indian family. A lovely read

We’re losing a ritual. We’re losing a ritual that I believe is transformative, transcendent, and is at the heart of the patient-physician relationship.

There is a point when grief exceeds the human capacity to emote, and as a result one is strangely composed-

Make something beautiful of your life.

When we cannot cure or save a life, our patients can at least feel cared for. It should be a basic human right.

I’ve always wanted to write a book like that, with the sense that you are contributing to the discourse in middle America,

I joke, but I only half joke, that if you come to one of our hospitals missing a limb, no one will believe you till they get a CAT scan, MRI, or orthopedic consult.

Sometimes this wound occurs at the moment of birth, sometimes it happens later. We are all fixing what is broken.

Graduates, your values matter. They are your north star. And work takes on new meaning when you feel you’re pointed in the right direction. Otherwise, it’s just a job. And life is too short for that.

I had been offered fellowships to enter as a graduate student at either Harvard or Princeton.

When I left university I got a job with Shell on their graduate scheme.

I should hope I dress differently at 25 than I did when I graduated high school. I hope I never stop changing.

There can be no ‘graduated exercises in drawing’ leading up to an artistic creation. That goal can be attained only through the development of mechanical technique and through the freedom of the spirit.

We had the wood shop, the machine shop, so I know about all that. I wanted to build buildings when I graduated from high school. I do know my way around that stuff.

When a professor insists computer science is X but not Y, have compassion for his graduate students.

If a student takes the whole series of my folklore courses including the graduate seminars.