I'm a Brooklyn boy. I was born in Brooklyn, New York, and raised there, and spent most of my childhood there.

I learned a lot from Vietnam veterans, especially as some of them turned against their own war.

When I was still in my psychiatric residency training in New York City, I was subjected to the doctor draft of that time, during the early fifties, at the time of the Korean War.

I never quite envisioned myself a proper doctor under that white coat, but I was interested in the idea of healing and in the psychological dimension rather early on.

Sometimes its said that psychiatrists are doctors who are frightened by the sight of blood. I might have fallen into that category.

Every adult in the world has some sense that he or she might be obliterated at any time by these weapons that we have created.

I did the first study because I had been exposed to something that I took to be important and interesting - this thought reform process - in the military.

And I was troubled by the heavy-handed prose of so much psychoanalytic writing, which seemed drowned in its own concepts.

Yes, I've been very preoccupied with the survivor all through my work.

As a kid I was fascinated with sports, and I loved sports more than anything else. The first books I read were about sports, like books about Baseball Joe, as one baseball hero was called.

I don't have the feeling that as a very young person I read books that absolutely made their mark on my mind.

He who becomes his most truthful self, becomes the leader for everyone else.

Like plumbing, medicine is a profession where you learn early on not to put your fingers in your mouth.

Faced with crisis the man of character falls back on himself.

You can have a role in a movie that was originally something minor in terms of screen time, and all of a sudden we see something and go, wow, that's cool.

It's all about money, not freedom. If you think you're free, try going somewhere without money, okay?

There was a time when Patience ceased to be a virtue. It was long ago.

I've never encountered someone in public life who has less desire to hold office than Michelle Obama, though she is incredibly gifted at retail politics.

Belief in God is an act of faith. But so is believing our existence is simply the result of chance.

Those who devote their lives to earning a living are incapable of living a human existence.

Our emotions are not transformed by trying harder, but by seeing more clearly.