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

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'.

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.

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

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

We have the sense that medical students come to medicine with a great capacity to understand the suffering of patients. And then by the end of the third year they completely lose that ability, partly because we teach them the specialized language of medicine.

Yesterday misspent can't be recall'd Vanity makes beauty contemptible Wisdom is more valuable than riches.