The only way to know where you are is by where you have just been.

Not only our actions, but also our omissions, become our destiny.

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.

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

What we need in medical schools is not to teach empathy, as much as to preserve it. 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; empathy can be replaced by cynicism.

He had so many ways of climbing into the tree house in his head, escaping the madness below, and pulling the ladder up behind him.

Pray tell us, what's your favorite number?"... "Shiva jumped up to the board, uninvited, and wrote 10,213,223"... "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'.