We want to be on the winning team, but at the risk of turning our backs on the losers, no, it is not worth it. So we fight the long defeat.

The idea that some lives matter less is the root of all that is wrong with the world.

If access to health care is considered a human right, who is considered human enough to have that right?

For me, an area of moral clarity is: you're in front of someone who's suffering and you have the tools at your disposal to alleviate that suffering or even eradicate it, and you act.

It is clear that the pharmaceutical industry is not, by any stretch of the imagination, doing enough to ensure that the poor have access to adequate medical care.

The essence of global health equity is the idea that something so precious as health might be viewed as a right.

With rare exceptions, all of your most important achievements on this planet will come from working with others- or, in a word, partnership.

What I can argue is that no one should have to die of a disease that is treatable.

If I am hungry, that is a material problem; if someone else is hungry, that is a spiritual problem.

We have to design a health delivery system by actually talking to people and asking, 'What would make this service better for you?' As soon as you start asking, you get a flood of answers.

That's when I feel most alive, when I'm helping people.

I look out at the reservation, still and glittering with casinos, and think of all the death dried up and buried in its dirt.

Let those who live never forget those who died!

I've always shied away from conventional wisdom, though I know the power of it.

I'm not really religious but very spiritual. I give money to this company that manufactures hearing aids on a regular basis. More people should really hear me sing. I have a gift from God.

I’ve tried actively to define myself and redefine myself, and not be pigeonholed.

If you're a caretaker, who are you when there's no one else to take care of?

I have choices," I insisted, refusing to break eye contact. "We both do. I may have to make mine carefully, and make a few compromises along the way, but I have a choice. I choose you.

I sure don't think of myself as a fat person, just someone who carries extra weight. I've never seen anyone on the DL with pulled fat.

Paradise is for those who make paradise.

Though music oft hath such a charm to make bad good, and good provoke to harm.