If I became just a brain in a jar - as long as I can communicate back and forth with people, that would be okay with me.

And in stories, endings matter.

When I do an operation, it's half a dozen people. When it goes beautifully, it's like a symphony, with everybody playing their part.

Expertise is the mantra of modern medicine.

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.

I chose surgery because I thought that perhaps this would make me more like the kind of person I wanted to be.

Better is possible. It does not take genius. It takes diligence. It takes moral clarity. It takes ingenuity. And above all, it takes a willingness to try.