Down to their innate molecular core, cancer cells are hyperactive, survival-endowed, scrappy, fecund, inventive copies of ourselves.

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

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

I am a scientist and I am a physician. So I write papers.

Cell culture is a little like gardening. You sit and you look at cells, and then you see something and say, 'You know, that doesn't look right'.

Most discoveries even today are a combination of serendipity and of searching.

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.