Each is like a river that leaves behind its name and shape, the whole course of its path , to vanish into the vast sea of God.

Surgery is the red flower that blooms among the leaves and thorns that are the rest of medicine.

And If the surgeon is like a poet, then the scars you have made on countless bodies are like verses into the fashioning of which you have poured your soul.

You cannot separate passion from pathology any more than you can separate a person's spirit from his body.

The surgeon knows all the parts of the brain but he does not know his patient's dreams.

You do not die all at once. Some tissues live on for minutes, even hours, giving still their little cellular shrieks, molecular echoes of the agony of the whole corpus.

Autopsies give us the facts but not the truth.

Thus is the fruit of the Earth taken, its flesh torn. Thus is it given over standing, toward rot. It is the principle of corruption, the death of what is, the birth of what is to be. You are wine.

A minor operation is one that is done on someone else

The heart is pure theater throbbing in its cage palpably as any nightingale.

I contemplate the body, dead and diseased as well as alive and healthy.

An entire nation shook under the power of one man’s [MLK’s] dream! Now if one dream can do that for our nation, imagine what a dream can do for the Church.

Whatever you want, you must have the desire to work for it.

I'm a born-again atheist.

Powerlessness is such a lure, such a poisonous lure.

There is a terrible emptiness in me, an indifference that hurts.

Warriors do not win victories by beating their heads against walls, but by overtaking the walls. Warriors jump over walls; they don't demolish them.

My mother came from an Irish family of 11 kids and, of course, had a sister who was a nun, so I spent time at a convent and with an aunt and uncle who lived in New York and took me to the theater.

We [americans] are not a freedom-loving people in the beautiful, spiritual sense. We have an inspiring Constitution, but we're a hardhearted people.

I'm used to being crazy and "rock-n-rolly", which is a little different than this world. For me, it was a chance to stretch a little bit.

You have to find a different approach to what is through a different vantage point.