Most days, I go home and I feel rejuvenated. I feel ebullient.

It felt—nearly twenty-five hundred years after Hippocrates had naively coined the overarching term karkinos—that modern oncology was hardly any more sophisticated in its taxonomy of cancer.

Cancer was not disorganized chromosomal chaos. It was organized chromosomal chaos

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

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'.

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

There is a duality in recognising what an incredible disease it is - in terms of its origin, that it emerges out of a normal cell. It's a reminder of what a wonderful thing a normal cell is. In a very cold, scientific sense, I think a cancer cell is a kind of biological marvel.