But I realized that not only did I need to keep tuning my skills as a doctor, I also had to figure out a way to live with the uncertainty of medicine and its attendant anxiety.

Empathy--the ability to identify with someone else's suffering--is certainly a prerequisite for a genuine apology.

In general, empathy is easier the more we can identify with someone. When we can genuinely envision ourselves in a situation, it's possible to intuit what that person's suffering might feel like.

Hospital life--with its byzantine array of moving parts layered atop the unpredictable rhythms of illness--is a permanent state of flux.

Burnout also leads to a large swath of physicians who aren't as empathetic toward their patients as they could be.

But at the most basic level, doctors need to be able to come forward with their errors and near-misses, otherwise we will never know where the problems lay.

Maybe being married is talking to oneself with one's other self listening.

We all live partially in reality and partially in a world of make-believe.

(Kindness) is much more a sign of character than mere niceness. Kindness connects to who you are, while niceness connects to how you want to be seen."-David Levithan (Every Day)

Insofar we are death-bound, existence is urgent and frightful. Insofar as are groundless, it is vertiginous and dreamlike. Insofar as we are insatiable, it is unquiet and tormented.

Simplicity is the most difficult of all concepts.

In this possibly terminal phase of human existence, democracy and freedom are more than just ideals to be valued - they may be essential to survival.

When Lebanon started its resistance it was a small and divided country.

God has reserved to Himself the right to determine the end of life, because He alone knows the goal to which it is His will to lead it. It is for Him alone to justify a life or to cast it away.

Two lives that once part are as ships that divide.

The preaching is part of the reason I don't go to church. Plus, I don't know, it was never part of my tradition.