“The doctor who treats himself has a fool for a patient.”

“Exhausted after a full day of treating patients, William Carlos Williams angrily answered the phone. “Doctor,” said a woman’s voice, “my child has swallowed a mouse.” “Then get him to swallow a cat,” he replied, and slammed down the receiver.”

“But the story of leukemia--the story of cancer--isn't the story of doctors who struggle and survive, moving from institution to another. It is the story of patients who struggle and survive, moving from on embankment of illness to another. Resilience, inventiveness, and survivorship--qualities often ascribed to great physicians--are reflected qualities, emanating first from those who struggle with illness and only then mirrored by those who treat them. If the history of medicine is told through the stories of doctors, it is because their contributions stand in place of the more substantive heroism of their patients.”

“The physician should not treat the disease but the patient who is suffering from it”

“Doctors think a lot of patients are cured who have simply quit in disgust.”

“In my opinion, our health care system has failed when a doctor fails to treat an illness that is treatable.”