Select language, opens an overlay

Quotations (13)

1 to 13 of 13 items
Not the beginning of the end, but the end of the beginning
“I will share your joy and sorrow / Till we’ve seen this journey through.”
When you come to one of the many moments in life when you must give an account of yourself, provide a ledger of what you have been, and done, and meant to the world, do not, I pray, discount that you filled a dying man's days with a sated…
"Death may be a one-time event, but living with terminal illness is a process."
"In the end, it cannot be doubted that each of us can see only a part of the picture. The doctor sees one, the patient another, the engineer a third, the economist a fourth, the pearl diver a fifth, the alcoholic a sixth, the cable guy a…
"A match flickers but does not light. The mother's wailing in room 543, the searing red rims of the father's lower eyelids, tears silently streaking his face: this flip side of joy, the unbearable, unjust, unexpected presence of death...…
"You can't ever reach perfection, but you can believe in an asymptote toward which you are ceaselessly striving."
"... As a resident [neurosurgeon], my highest ideal was not saving lives - everyone dies eventually - but guiding a patient or family to an understanding of death or illness. ... The families [of the patient] see the past, the ...…
...When you come to one of the many moments in life when you must give an account of yourself, provide a ledger of what you have been, and done, and meant to the world, do not, I pray, discount that you filled a dying man’s days with a…
You can't ever reach perfection, but you can believe in an asymptote toward which you are ceaselessly striving.
I was less driven by achievement than by trying to understand, in earnest: what makes human life meaningful? I still felt literature provided the best account of the life of the mind, while neuroscience laid down the most elegant rules of…
Chemotherapy began on Monday. Lucy, my mother and I went to the infusion center together. I had an IV placed, settled into an easy chair and waited.
There we were, doctor and patient, in a relationship that sometimes carries a magisterial air and other times, like now, was no more, and no less, than two people huddled together, as one faces the abyss. Doctors, it turns out, need hope,…