Correlation is not cause, it is just a 'music of chance'.

Reading is a private pursuit; one that takes place behind closed doors.

Like countless first-year medical students, immersed in the symptoms of one disease after another, I am alert to the tingles and pangs, the throbs and quivers of my mortal body, each one of which is potentially a sign of the end.

There is this assumption that much of what I write is about my life, and that simply is not true.

In effect, painting is the still memory of [the artist's] human motion, and our individual responses to it depend on who we are, on our character, which underlines the simple truth that no person leaves himself behind in order to look at a painting.

Intellectual curiosity about one's own illness is certainly born of a desire for mastery. If I couldn't cure myself, perhaps I could at least begin to understand myself.

Memory is essential to who we are, and memories can be both implicit and explicit - unconscious and conscious.