It was all I had, all I've ever had, the only currency, the only proof that I was alive. Memory.

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

I think we learn from medicine everywhere that it is, at its heart, a human endeavor, requiring good science but also a limitless curiosity and interest in your fellow human being, and that the physician-patient relationship is key; all else follows from it.

When a man is a mystery to himself you can hardly call him mysterious.

Life, too, is like that. You live it forward, but understand it backward. It is only when you stop and look to the rear that you see the corpse caught under your wheel.

This is my life, I thought...I have excised the cancer from my past, cut it out; I have crossed the high plains, descended into the desert, traversed oceans, and planted my feet in new soil; I have been the apprentice, paid my dues, and have just become master of my ship. But when I look down, why do I see the ancient, tarred, mud-stained slippers that I buried at the start of the journey still stuck to my feet?

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.