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.

I always wondered if the good people who send us bibles really think that hookworm and hunger are healed by scripture? Our patients are illiterate.

In America, we have always taken it as an article of faith that we 'battle' cancer; we attack it with knives, we poison it with chemotherapy or we blast it with radiation. If we are fortunate, we 'beat' the cancer. If not, we are posthumously praised for having 'succumbed after a long battle.'

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

Pray tell us, what's your favorite number?

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

The bottom line: health care reform is about the patient, not about the physician.