Every loss recapitulates earlier losses, but every affirmation of identity echoes earlier moments of clarity.

We do not need to understand other people and their customs fully to interact with them and learn in the process; it is making the effort to interact without knowing all the rules, improvising certain situations, which allows us to grow.

Insight, I believe, refers to the depth of understanding that comes by setting experiences, yours and mine, familiar and exotic, new and old, side by side, learning by letting them speak to one another.

The timing of death, like the ending of a story, gives a changed meaning to what preceded it.

Most higher education is devoted to affirming the traditions and origins of an existing elite and transmitting them to new members.

Traditionally in American society, men have been trained for both competition and teamwork through sports, while women have been reared to merge their welfare with that of the family, with fewer opportunities for either independence or other team identifications, and fewer challenges to direct competition. In effect, women have been circumscribed within that unit where the benefit of one is most easily believed to be the benefit of all.

A suprising number of physicians manage to continue to care about persons even after the rigors of medical training.