Marriage is like a series of opposing reflections, inverse images getting ever smaller like nesting dolls, each one of your trying to squeeze yourself smaller to fit inside the hopes of the other, until one of you cracks or stops existing.

Life is nasty, brutish, and short. Death is easy.

Such is the demographic paradox of a junior physician's relationship with his patients: I worry about how to extend their lives. This anxiety inevitably shortens my own.

A century ago, people laughed at the notion that we were descended from monkeys. Today, the individuals most offended by that claim are the monkeys.

Depression and hopelessness are not the only reasons terminally ill patients wish to end their lives. Many individuals see nothing undignified about choosing to end their lives at the time and manner of their choosing - and many view such a choice as the meaningful culmination of a good life.

The only thing more difficult than persuading someone else to start having sex with you is persuading yourself to stop.

If God wanted teenagers to be abstinent, puberty would begin at twenty.