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

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

When I wake to the gift of yet another sunrise my first thought is to rouse him and say, I owe you the sight of morning.

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

Pray tell us, what's your favorite number?

We're losing a ritual. We're losing a ritual that I believe is transformative, transcendent, and is at the heart of the patient-physician relationship.

He was teaching me how to die, just as he'd taught me how to live.