A grateful world, nation and cadre of surgeons general who followed in his shadow are forever indebted to Surgeon General Koop's wisdom, fortitude, integrity and selfless service.

When I was 16, I played Macbeth at school and my English teacher said, 'I think you may have acting talent. Try to get into the National Youth Theatre of Great Britain and see where you get.' I wouldn't have thought of that at all. I wanted to be a surgeon, but I wasn't a clever man.

My father passed away when I was seven, mom single-handedly brought up my brother Rahul and me. She was a civil surgeon posted in rural areas. We went through some tough times but she gave us a beautiful life.

In my eyes, there's heroes I look up to. People who saved me - my caretakers, people at Boston Medical Center. My surgeon. The people that pulled me off that ground, who pulled me out. Those are my heroes. The police. The paramedics. Those are the true heroes.

Prior to my call to the Twelve, I served as a medical doctor and surgeon.

On bad days, I think I'd like to be a plastic surgeon who goes to Third World countries and operates on children in villages with airlifts, and then I think, 'Yeah, right, I'm going to go back to undergraduate school and take all the biology I missed and then go to medical school.' No. No.

Just the actual physical ability to hold four instruments simultaneously and do some of the things that Vivien was able to do is mind blowing to any surgeon. He never went to medical school and he became one of the great teachers of medicine himself, people are just amazed.

As a medical doctor and cardiac surgeon, I had the responsibility of performing open-heart surgery on President Spencer W. Kimball in 1972, when he was Acting President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.

You don't have to be a brain surgeon to be a valuable person. You become valuable because of the knowledge that you have. And that doesn't mean you won't fail sometimes. The important thing is to keep trying.

We dragged the National Health Service from the depths of degradation. I've got a United Nations heart bypass to prove it and it was done by a Syrian cardiologist, a Malaysian surgeon, a Dutch doctor and a Nigerian registrar.

I tell a student that the most important class you can take is technique. A great chef is first a great technician. 'If you are a jeweler, or a surgeon or a cook, you have to know the trade in your hand. You have to learn the process. You learn it through endless repetition until it belongs to you.

As a surgeon you have to have a controlled arrogance. If it's uncontrolled, you kill people, but you have to be pretty arrogant to saw through a person's chest, take out their heart and believe you can fix it. Then, when you succeed and the patient survives, you pray, because it's only by the grace of God that you get there.

It's funny when people ask an actor what they want to play next, because you don't get to decide what you play. I don't know. I can only say this: I don't want to and have no interest in playing a plastic surgeon. That's for sure. I'm open to anything else.

The biggest difficulty in film industry today is not that of getting dates, actors or finance, but writers. We don't get writers. They are like heart surgeons with whom you need to meet after fixing an appointment.

I'd make a terrible surgeon. The fear of blood? Very high on my list.

I think people align themselves with my way of thinking when they're talking to me. They try to create new avenues for me to pursue, so if you want to be a doctor and you have interest in human rights and philanthropy and social equality of medicine and disease, why don't you think about being surgeon general?

My son is a tree surgeon and gets me a lovely tree. I like to put it up early, as I can't wait for Christmas. We dress it with decorations that have been in the family for years.

I had a friend who was a plastic surgeon, so he would do little things. I never had, like, a full thing. So I would go in maybe once every two or three years, and he'd do a little here, a little there; tweak you, like you tweak your car. Then I became the plastic surgery poster girl.

Beauty lasts five minutes. Maybe longer if you have a good plastic surgeon.

She got her looks from her father. He's a plastic surgeon.

Have you seen some of the women - and the men - in Los Angeles? They pay surgeons to make them look completely different in the hope of finding their youth. But youth comes from within. If you have a young attitude, then that can show in your face, the way you walk and move.

The beautiful part of writing is that you don't have to get it right the first time, unlike, say, a brain surgeon.

What if the kid you bullied at school, grew up, and turned out to be the only surgeon who could save your life?

"And sometimes I believe your relentless analysis of June leaves something out, which is your feeling for her beyond knowledge, or in spite of knowledge. I often see how you sob over what you destroy, how you want to stop and just worship; and you do stop, and then a moment later you are at it again with a knife, like a surgeon.