Perhaps more than any other disease before or since, syphilis in early modern Europe provoked the kind of widespread moral panic that AIDS revived when it struck America in the 1980s.

Medical research in the twentieth century mostly takes place in the lab; in the Renaissance, though, researchers went first and foremost to the library to see what the ancients had said.

Even more than this, however, the sick - like lepers - were often reviled because people believed that they had brought their torments upon themselves.

Was this an old disease, and, if so, which one? If it was new, what did that say about the state of medical knowledge? And in any case, how could physicians make sense of it?

I heard wordOf bellied sailcloth, Creak of oars, And gold in Eastland.Then I smelledA smell remembered:Salt of sprayAnd black-pitched boat's keel.

When we humans learn how to analyze the messages of the nighttime we open ourselves up to manifest our greatest selves.

A stout heart breaks bad luck.

We all have such common ways to identify with each other, and I think when you approach music in that organic way, it's almost indescribable how it connects human to human and heart to heart.

If you drill, there's going to be a spill. It's axiomatic.

I think comics have far more potential than a lot of people realize.

We need art as much as we need good works. You need it like food. You need it for inspiration to keep going on the days that your low. We need each other in that way.

After you have found inner peace you have endless energy - the more you give, the more you receive. After you have found your calling, you work easily and joyously. You never get tired.

Every shot I have ever made has been a compromise in some way. No image has ever been as good as the one I envisioned in my mind's eye.

One is punished by the very things by which he sins.