“Being the first born gives you great patience.”

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.

What did it say when a man had fewer clothes than books?

And pray, why would this number interest us?” “It is the only number that describes itself when you read it, ‘One zero, two ones, three twos, two threes’.

True religion is a universal and (necessarily) ego-transcending psycho-physical motivation of human beings.

Truth to being with.

Our relationship with alcohol is a hologram for how human beings relate to the natural world.

You can do terrible things when you don’t know who you are.

This is called being a human and it happens to everyone.

We already know that there are those close to James Comey who have a very different take, if there are tapes, of course, that would be the best evidence of what took place.

The human being makes room for and makes use of those organisms that are not him.

You can’t learn anything from being perfect.