I joke, but I only half joke, that if you come to one of our hospitals missing a limb, no one will believe you till they get a CAT scan, MRI, or orthopedic consult.

Rituals, anthropologists will tell us, are about transformation. The rituals we use for marriage, baptism or inaugurating a president are as elaborate as they are because we associate the ritual with a major life passage, the crossing of a critical threshold, or in other words, with transformation.

Students undergo a conversion in the third year of medical school - not pre-clinical to clinical, but pre-cynical to cynical.

To be around someone whose self-confidence is more than what our first glance led us to expect is seductive.

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

No blade can puncture the human heart like the well-chosen words of a spiteful son.

By visiting patients in their home, by helping them come to terms with their illness, I could heal when I could not cure.