56 Quotes About Surgery

He walked across the room and flicked a switch. A spotlight turned on, illuminating a laminated poster of a woman on his wall. He took a crayon from his pocket and began drawing on it. I could see smudges from past demonstrations. [. . .] His dashed lines crisscrossed the woman's chest as if he were planning a military maneuver on undulating terrain.

Before operating on a patient's brain, I realized, I must first understand his mind: his identity, his values, what makes his life worth living, & what devastation makes it reasonable to let that life end. The cost of my dedication to succeed was high, & the ineluctable failures brought me nearly unbearable guilt. Those burdens are what make medicine holy & wholly impossible.

Scars are simply modern battle wounds. Sometimes the enemy happens to be inside us.

Surgical Talk As we look at the insides of humans,We find the inside of ourselves And each other.What lies beneath us?What do we believeAbout the world and our place in it?We cut down layer upon layerAnd dissect the inner life.

Do I shock you? We are very playful here. It's a good tone for an operating theater. It is a theater, after all.

If the operation is difficult, you are not doing it properly.

Surgery was the most difficult thing I could imagine.And so I became a surgeon.

His chief delights were of a less public and philanthropic kind, requiring many explanations of sounds which seemed peculiar even amidst that babel of the damned. Among these sounds were frequent revolver-shots—surely not uncommon on a battlefield, but distinctly uncommon in an hospital. Dr. West’s reanimated specimens were not meant for long existence or a large audience.

Tears wet my eyes. I’m a surgeon. I like solving things. But how do I solvethis?