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

Writing lets you step back and think through a problem. Even the angriest rant forces the writer to achieve a degree of thoughtfulness.

This was not guilt: guilt is what you feel when you have done something wrong. What I felt was shame: I was what was wrong.

Just using a checklist requires [doctors] to embrace different values from ones we've had, like humility, discipline, teamwork.

When we lived in a society where we had large families that lived together, especially in agricultural societies like my grandfather and father grew up in, the result is you always had family around to take care of you.

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

I talked to over two hundred patients and family members about their experiences with aging, serious illnesses, and the big unfixables. But I also spoke with scores of physicians, and especially geriatricians, palliative care doctors, hospice nurses, and nursing home workers. The biggest thing I found was that when these clinicians were at their best, they were recognizing that people had priorities besides merely living longer. The most important and reliable way that we can understand what people's priorities are, besides just living longer, is to simply ask. And we don't ask.