The delivery of medical care is to do as much nothing as possible.

At a cardiac arrest, the first procedure is to take your own pulse

There is no body cavity that cannot be reached with a number fourteen needle and a good strong arm.

The patient is the one with the disease

I make my patients feel like they're still part of life, part of some grand nutty scheme instead of alone with their diseases. With me, they still feel part of the human race.

Yes, last year in interviewing. Empathy is when you repeat the last three words the patient says and nod your head.

Only write if you can't not.

A BMS hears hoofbeats outside his window, the first thing he thinks of is a zebra

Gomers are human beings who have lost what goes into being human beings. They want to die, and we will not let them.

To do nothing for the gomers was to do something, and the more conscientiously I did nothing the better they got.

It ain't easy to do nothing, now that society is telling everyone that their body is fundamentally flawed and about to self-destruct. People are afraid they're on the verge of death all the time

Maladict had hallucinations, but Wazzer had a certainty you could bend steel around. It was the opposite of a hallucination, somehow. It was as if she could see what was real and you couldn't.

Although the Bible is a living book, it will not jump into your palms pleading, "Read me please". You've to make a choice to do so!

I don't know what you can possibly do for less than $50 to have somebody come in your house.

It may be easier to get forgiveness than permission, but trust is harder to get back than both.

I worked all through my 20's, all through my 30's, so I've been lucky to be working.

I was always loud and obnoxious and giggly and funny.

No one has ever asked an actor, 'You're playing a strong-minded man.' We assume that men are strong-minded, or have opinions. But a strong-minded woman is a different animal.

I agree, along with Carl Sagan, that we should eventually become a two planet species. Life is too precious to place on a single planet.

How cold the vacancy When the phantoms are gone and the shaken realist First sees reality. The mortal no Has its emptiness and tragic expirations.

We both [with Alixandra Kolesky MacKenzie] got into ceramics, you might say, by the back door. Looking back on it, I think this was a very good thing.