“To become a doctor, you spend so much time in the tunnels of preparati...” — Atul Gawande Quote

To become a doctor, you spend so much time in the tunnels of preparation - head down, trying not to screw up, trying to make it from one day to the next - that it is a shock to find yourself at the other end, with someone shaking your hand and asking how much money you want to make.

Expertise is the mantra of modern medicine.

In every industrialized nation, the movement to reform health care has begun with stories about cruelty.

This is the reality of intensive care: at any point, we are as apt to harm as we are to heal.

Our great struggle in medicine these days is not just with ignorance and uncertainty. It's also with complexity: how much you have to make sure you have in your head and think about. There are a thousand ways things can go wrong.

If God gives you a watch, are you honoring Him more by asking Him what time it is or by simply consulting the watch?

Particularly now with social media, you only need to turn round and someone will have a camera in your face and occasionally someone will be talking to you at the bar, asking you to pose for a picture, and someone will say, 'They're videoing this.' They're videoing you at the bar!

The thing I hate most in acting is asking permission to do things. What you really want to do is say, 'This is my need; this is what's going to get me further; this is what's going to be alive. I don't ever say, 'Do you mind if...?' I just come in and do it.

I remember Mick Jagger asking me 'hey, how do you guys feel about us coming over here and taking all the play from you guys?' I said 'Well, in a way, you have eliminated all my competition.