My mom taught me to live by the three p's: to always be passionate, persistent, and prepared.

My mom has always been my support system. She taught me to never give up and to keep pursuing my passions no matter what.

And the greatest lesson that mom ever taught me though was this one. She told me there would be times in your life when you have to choose between being loved and being respected. Now she said to always pick being respected.

I guess I was a mom so late in life, my daughter was the greatest thing since sliced bread.

Mothers don't let your daughters grow up to be models unless you're present.

It's the moms of this nation - single, married, widowed - who really hold this country together. We're the mothers, we're the wives, we're the grandmothers, we're the big sisters, we're the little sisters, we're the daughters. You know it's true, don't you? You're the ones who always have to do a little more.

What greater aspiration and challenge are there for a mother than the hope of raising a great son or daughter?

I once heard two ladies going on and on about the pains of childbirth and how men don't seem to know what real pain is. I asked if either of them ever got themselves caught in a zipper.

How could man rejoice in victory and delight in the slaughter of men?

Don't get caught up in the 'look' thing. Sometimes, we as men and women, the first thing that attracts us to someone is their physical appearance, and that's not always a good thing because what's good on the outside is not always good on the inside.

Men must be taught as if you taught them not, and things unknown proposed as things forgot.

As a medical student in the 1970s, I was taught that the foundations of diagnosis and treatment were to take a detailed history and to perform a comprehensive clinical examination.

I was always taught at medical school that you should never do a test unless you could do something with the result.

I first got sick after I had my daughter, Kimberly, 21 years ago. I'd always been energetic and never had any serious medical problems. Then I got very sick with a high fever. They told me I had mononucleosis. I became pregnant right away with Sean, and after he was born, I never seemed to recover.

My best friend in medical school was a magician. And we were shown an X-ray of a sword-swallower, and I tried it and failed. Then I got a sword-swallower as a patient, and he taught me.

You're taught from the day you start medical school that you're a god, that you can have power over life and death. So when your life starts to crumble, and the highest power you see is looking back in the mirror - and you know that power is flawed - it is very hard to get past that.

Medical judgment can be taught - laboriously, in long periods of training - but it cannot be neatly handed over as the occasion demands it. It is the irreplaceable and untransferable contribution that the healer makes to the suffering individual who would be healed.

I've been advised not to have any more children for medical reasons, so that's it - the shop has closed, even though I would have loved a daughter.

Remember, I'm a doctor's daughter. So obviously I'm interested in all medical things.

Writing is very much an emotional process; it requires you to be very in touch with your feelings. That is the opposite of what you're taught as a medical doctor. We're supposed to be detached and logical. Maybe because I started off as a writer and then became a doctor, I'm able to integrate those two.

As my mentor in Medical School, Dr William Strong taught me: Never wear a white coat; it separates you from a fellow human being. I never have from that day on. You are your patients guide, counselor, and defender, not their ruler and dictator.

Medical training taught me the art of breaking down the complex maze of stories, symbols and rituals into clear systems. You could say that it helped me figure out the anatomy and physiology of mythology and its relevance in a society more incisively. How is it that no society can, or does, exist without them?

Cancer affects all of us, whether you're a daughter, mother, sister, friend, coworker, doctor, patient.

I finally got a chance to talk to my daughter from my previous marriage. I just got married May 3 to my beautiful wife, but we don't see each other much.