Good physicians are rarely dispassionate. They agonize and self-doubt over patients.

A positive attitude does not cure cancer, any more than a negative one causes it.

A breast cancer might turn out to have a close resemblance to a gastric cancer. And this kind of reorganization of cancer in terms of its internal genetic anatomy has really changed the way we treat and approach cancer in general.

I think the cardinal rule of learning to write is learning to read first. I learned to write by learning to read.

One swallow is a coincidence, but two swallows make summer.

There's a phrase in Shakespeare: he refers to it as the 'hidden imposthume', and this idea of a hidden swelling is seminal to cancer. But even in more contemporary writing it's called 'the big C'.

If the history of medicine is told through the stories of doctors, it is because their contributions stand in place of the more substantive heroism of their patients.