7 Quotes by Michael J. Collins

Why do we always think our pain will be less if we can make others suffer more?

It was the first time I had ever seen someone die, and it wasn't what I expected...I stood there waiting for something momentous to happen, for someone to say something profound, but there was nothing...I still had the childish notion that since my life was so important, all lives were so important. Since my death would be so cataclysmic, all deaths would be so cataclysmic.

I'm taking inorganic chem and physics not because I want to but because I have to. Not every doctor wants to be a scientist. Some of us just want to take care of sick people. I can't help thinking that medicine is more closely aligned to the humanities than to the sciences. I can't help thinking that I could learn more about being a good doctor from William Shakespeare than I could from Isaac Newton. After all, isn't understanding people at least as important as understanding pathology?

I’m starting to realize that I can’t be a child forever, that I don’t want to be a child forever. I’ve had my turn, and now it’s time to grow up.

We were learning that all the training and all the caring in the world were not going to solve every problem. This wasn’t medical school. We weren’t going to ace every exam. Silver-haired professors weren’t going to pat us on the head and marvel at our intellectual acumen. We weren’t going to win every battle.

At times it felt like I was killing myself. And yet the only thing I could recall at that moment was how much fun it had been, and how wonderful it was to do this for a living.

We, who should know better, reinforce every patient’s desire to hide from the reality of his own mortality.