Every time I caught a fish, I wondered how something so small could have such clear, pure strength. It kept reminding me of another sensation, from another realm. The fish on the line, I eventually realized, felt like the baby, kicking inside you. Or the shocking, life-hungry pull of the baby on the breast. Perhaps fishing is like quickening for men, a long and patient wait for a few electric moments when they feel connected to another life.

Simple intervention - the time spent with a patient - is a very powerful ingredient of the patient-doctor contract. The evidence is against the traditions such as surgery for back pain being true - the evidence says it doesn't work.

Motherhood is like Albania- you can't trust the descriptions in the books, you have to go there.

It wasn't just that my breasts were sore and my legs seethed with restlessness at night. A knitted cap seemed to have settled on my brain as well. Never think that pregnancy is just a spare room in a woman's house; it changes everything - the heat, the light, the furniture.

Breastfeeding is an unsentimental metaphor for how love works, in a way. You don’t decide how much and how deeply to love - you respond to the beloved, and give with joy exactly as much as they want.

Why are we, the most medicalized of societies, a culture in pain?

At a certain point, the soul exits from a cherished photograph, because we have come to the end of our loving projection into that moment.