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

You're getting well,' Samuel said. 'Some people think it's an insult to the glory of their sickness to get well. But the time poultice is no respecter of glories. Everyone gets well if he waits around.

For the most part people are not curious except about themselves.

All of them had a restlessness in common.

The trash and litter of nature disappears into the ground with the passing of each year, but man's litter has more permanence.

There ain't no sin and there ain't no virtue. There's just stuff people do.

Charley is a mind-reading dog. There have been many trips in his lifetime, and often he has to be left at home. He knows we are going long before the suitcase has come out, and he paces and worries and whines and goes into a state of mild hysteria.