Doc still loved true things but he knew that it was not a general love and it could be a very dangerous mistress.

After the bare requisites to living and reproducing, man wants most to leave some record of himself, a proof, perhaps, that he has really existed. He leaves his proof on wood, on stone or on the lives of other people. This deep desire exists in everyone, from the boy who writes dirty words in a public toilet to the Buddha who etches his image in the race mind. Life is so unreal. I think that we seriously doubt that we exist and go about trying to prove that we do.

...no gift will ever buy back a man's love when you have removed his self-love.

There is one thing pleasantly unconfusing about medicine. The direction and the end are fixed and the patient never works backward.

Men do change, and change comes like a little wind that ruffles the curtains at dawn, and it comes like the stealthy perfume of wildflowers hidden in the grass. Change may be announced by a small ache, so that you think you're catching cold. Or you may feel a faint disgust for something you loved yesterday. It may even take the form of a hunger that peanuts won't satisfy. Isn't overeating said to be one of the strongest symptoms of discontent. And isn't discontent the lever of change?

Perhaps it takes courage to raise children.

I've done my damndest to rip a reader's nerves to rags, I don't want him satisfied.