I was angry with myself because I still loved her, or at least I loved that dream of our togetherness. My feelings were unreasonable, irrational, and I couldn't change them. That hurt.

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

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.'

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

Patients know in a heartbeat if they're getting a clumsy exam.

In writing, as in medicine, there are no short cuts. You need stamina.

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.