At a given instant everything the surgeon knows suddenly becomes important to the solution of the problem. You can't do it an hour later, or tomorrow. Nor can you go to the library and look it up.

Surgery is always second best. If you can so something else, it’s better. Surgery is limited. It is operating on someone who has no place else to go.

When words failed I realized there was something unspeakably beautiful in not being able to put words to your happiness.

If not you, who?

Do you think there's such a thing as a ghost who masquerades as a person? Do you believe that there are people whose bodies are still alive here on earth but whose souls are already in hell?

The success of a society is to be evaluated primarily by the freedoms that members of the society enjoy.

There are indications that today the intellectuals are coming back to [Albert] Camus. History has given them reason to, with the fall of communism.

[The monks'] credulity debased and vitiated the faculties of the mind: they corrupted the evidence of history; and superstition gradually extinguished the hostile light of philosophy and science.

It's hard to go with a trend. As soon as it's out, everyone picks it up. It's important to stay true to yourself. Have fun with fashion instead of letting it dictate.

Fiction is a bridge to the truth that journalism can't reach.

The Pariahs, our fellow beings, ought to be educated by the higher castes.

I love my wife more than anything in the world, but boy when she had our babies, it quadrupled. There's just something about the connection.