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

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.

When I use the word 'healing', by that I mean that every disease has a physical element that we're very good at handling, but there's always a sense of the violation. 'Why me?' 'Why is my leg broken on the ski trip and not anyone else's?' And I think that medicine has done a terrible job of addressing that spiritual violation.

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

When you win, you often lose, that's just a fact. There's no currency to straighten a warped spirit, or open a closed heart, a selfish heart.

If 'ecstasy' meant the sudden intrusion of the sacred into the ordinary, then it had just happened to me.

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