“I intend to study love as well as medicine, for it is one of the most mysterious and remarkable diseases that afflict mankind, and the best way to understand it is to have it. I may catch it someday, and then I should like to know how to treat and cure it.- Mac (Rose In Bloom)”

“Protection does not come in a bottle. It is in me, in my actions, in my thoughts. I am the best medicine for myself. I am the cure and the disease.”

“I like roses best. But they bloom in all four seasons. I wonder if people who like roses best have to die four times over again.”

“I am a sick man... I am a spiteful man. I am an unpleasant man. I think my liver is diseased. However, I don't know beans about my disease, and I am not sure what is bothering me. I don't treat it and never have, though I respect medicine and doctors. Besides, I am extremely superstitious, let's say sufficiently so to respect medicine. (I am educated enough not to be superstitious, but I am.) No, I refuse to treat it out of spite. You probably will not understand that. Well, but I understand it. Of course I can't explain to you just whom I am annoying in this case by my spite. I am perfectly well aware that I cannot "get even" with the doctors by not consulting them. I know better than anyone that I thereby injure only myself and no one else. But still, if I don't treat it, its is out of spite. My liver is bad, well then-- let it get even worse!”

“Those with less curiosity or ambition just mumble that God works in mysterious ways. I intend to catch him in the act.”

“I hate mankind, for I think myself one of the best of them, and I know how bad I am.”