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.

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.

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.

The devil is the god of this world and he has blinded our eyes.

The world is in greater peril from those who tolerate or encourage evil than from those who actually commit it.

But sometimes all the stars in the entire universe conspire to make something good happen.

I cannot give you the formula for success, but I can give you the formula for failure - which is: Try to please everybody.

I did not ask for success; I asked for wonder.

We all want to be loved, don't we? Everyone looks for a way of finding love. It's a constant search for affection in every walk of life.

I remain just one thing, and one thing only - and that is a clown. It places me on a far higher plane than any politician.

Miracles are simply a change in perception.

Sometimes I have a great day of filming and sometimes the theater strikes me better. It just depends.

In America, fundamentalist Christians believe the world was created 6,000 years ago - in England people drink in bars that are older than that.