Hope gives us the courage to confront our circumstances and the capacity to surmount them.

True hope is cleareyed. It sees all the difficulties that exist and all the potential for failure, but through that carves a realistic path to a better future.

I had learned that every patient has the right to hope, despite long odds, and it was my role to help nurture that hope.

Hope can be imagined as a domino effect, a chain reaction, each increment making the next increase more feasible... There are moments of fear and doubt that can deflate it.

Even when there is no longer hope for the body, there is always hope for the soul.

On average, physicians interrupt patients within eighteen seconds of when they begin telling their story.

Many years before when I had serious back pain from a sports injury, the surgeons said they would explore my spine and "figure it out." Out of frustration I had impulsively opted for the procedure. They ended up fusing the vertebrae. It left me debilitated. In hindsight, I blamed myself more than the surgeons. I had pressed them for a solution when in fact none was apparent because the cause of the pain was obscure.