When [disease] can't be stopped, that's where we become lost.

You may not control life's circumstances, but getting to be the author of your life means getting to control what you do with them.

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

Arriving at an acceptance of one's mortality is a process, not an epiphany.

The big thing that's happened is, in the time since the Affordable Care Act has been going on, our medical science has been advancing. We have now genomic data. We have the power of big data about what your living patterns are, what's happening in your body. Even your smartphone can collect data about your walking or your pulse or other things that could be incredibly meaningful in being able to predict whether you have disease coming in the future and help avert those problems.

No one teaches you how to think about money in medical school or residency. Yet, from the moment you start practicing, you must think about it. You must consider what is covered for a patient and what is not.

In the end, people don't view their life as merely the average of all its moments-which, after all, is mostly nothing much plus some sleep. For human beings, life is meaningful because it is a story. A story has a sense of a whole, and its arc is determined by the significant moments, the ones where something happens. Measurements of people's minute-by-minute levels of pleasure and pain miss this fundamental aspect of human existence. A seemingly happy life maybe empty. A seemingly difficult life may be devoted to a great cause. We have purposes larger than ourselves.