“If you had a Starbucks that never sold coffee, you wouldn't keep the s...” — Deborah Birx Quote

“If you had a Starbucks that never sold coffee, you wouldn't keep the site open. It's not that we're abandoning sites, but we're saying, 'Let's go where there's HIV, focus our resources there.'”

“There are other countries that if you had a preexisting condition, and let's say the virus caused you to go to the ICU and then have a heart or kidney problem, some countries are recording as a heart issue or a kidney issue and not a COVID-19 death.”

“I've had to confront a lot of pandemics and infectious diseases around the globe.”

“In every religion I can think of, there exists some variation on the theme of abandoning the settled life and walking one's way to godliness. The Hindu sadhu, the pilgrims of Compostela walking past their sins, the circumambulators of the Buddhist kora, the haj.”

“Ninety percent of my material is made on stage, but I feel like you're missing something by abandoning sitting down to write entirely.”

“The addictive pleasure of abandoning yourself to a book, of losing consciousness of your worries, your body, and your surroundings, to become a ghost haunting other worlds has influenced me in many ways.”