In one study, old people assigned to a geriatrics team stayed independent for far longer, and were admitted to the hospital less.

Life is choices, and they are relentless. No sooner have you made one choice than another is upon you.

One of the consequences of if the Affordable Care Act is repealed, is that all of us now are at risk of being a preexisting - of having a preexisting condition waiting to happen. Life, increasingly, is a preexisting condition waiting to happen, now that we have more and more of this data available.

Courage is strength in the face of knowledge of what is to be feared or hoped. Wisdom is prudent strength.

In psychology, there's something called the broken-leg problem. A statistical formula may be highly successful in predicting whether or not a person will go to a movie in the next week. But someone who knows that this person is laid up with a broken leg will beat the formula. No formula can take into account the infinite range of such exceptional events.

Outsiders tend to be the first to recognize the inadequacies of our social institutions. But, precisely because they are outsiders, they are usually in a poor position to fix them.

Our reluctance to honestly examine the experience of aging and dying has increased the harm we inflict on people and denied them the basic comforts they most need.