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'.

When you immerse yourself in medicine you realise that hope is not absolute. It's not that simple.

In the laboratory, we call this the six-degrees-of-separation-from-cancer rule: you can ask any biological question, no matter how seemingly distant-what makes the heart fail, or why worms age, or even how birds learn songs-and you will end up, in fewer than six genetic steps, connecting with a proto-oncogene or tumor suppressor.

I left Delhi in 1989 and remember very little of how life used to be then. Increasingly, in my recent visits to Delhi, I've started to realize that the city has become intellectually very lively. It makes me want to discover the city over and over again.

It is hard to look at the tumor and not come away with the feeling that one has encountered a powerful monster in its infancy

Pharmacology is benefited by the prepared mind. You need to know what you are looking for.

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