Every sickness has an alien quality, a feeling of invasion and loss of control that is evident in the language we use about it.

Reading is perception as translation. The inert signs of an alphabet become living meanings in the mind.

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.

Demonstration of mastery gives a feeling of power and that feeling of power is a good feeling.

Pain is always emotional. Fear and depression keep constant company with chronic hurting.

Memory changes as a person matures.

Memory offers up its gifts only when jogged by something in the present. It isn't a storehouse of fixed images and words, but a dynamic associative network in the brain that is never quiet and is subject to revision each time we retrieve an old picture or old words.