I think confidence is something you build gradually, with experience. I've always felt that maybe one of the reasons that I did well as a student and made such good grades was because I lacked confidence. I never felt that I was prepared to take an examination, and I had to study a little bit extra.

I've always felt that I did well as a student because I lacked confidence.

I've always felt that maybe one of the reasons that I did well as a student and made such good grades was because I lacked confidence. Lacked self-confidence, and I never felt that I was prepared to take an examination, and I had to study a little bit extra. So that sort of lack of confidence helped me, I think, to make a good record when I was a student.

I think confidence is something you build gradually, with experience. I've always felt that maybe one of the reasons that I did well as a student and made such good grades was because I lacked confidence. I never felt that I was prepared to take an examination, and I had to study a little bit extra.

I think work is a privilege. ... It keeps you alive, spiritually.

[The heart is] really a fascinating organ. It's about the only organ in the body that you can really witness its function. Doing things. And so on. Some of the other organs you can witness, like the intestines, will have this sort of peristaltic motion. But nothing that can compare with the activity of the human heart.

Of the many 'firsts' with which I have been involved at the Texas Heart Institute —including the first successful human heart transplant in the United States and the first total artificial heart transplant in the world—the achievement that may have the greatest impact on health care did not occur in the operating room or in the research laboratory. It happened on a piece of paper... when we created the first-ever packaged pricing plan for cardiovascular surgical procedures.