One thing I do know about intimacy is that there are certain natural laws which govern the sexual experience of two people, and that these laws cannot be budged any more than gravity can be negotiated with. To feel physically comfortable with someone else's body is not a decision you can make. It has very little to do with how two people think or act or talk or even look. The mysterious magnet is either there, buried somewhere deep behind the sternum, or it is not. When it isn't there (as I have learned in the past, with heartbreaking clarity) you can no more force it to exist than a surgeon can force a patient's body to accept a kidney from the wrong donor. My friend Annie says it all comes down to one simple question: "Do you want your belly pressed against this person's belly forever --or not?

It goes without saying that the desire to accomplish the task with more confidence to avoid wasting time and labour and to spare our experimental animals as much as possible made us strictly observe all the precautions taken by surgeons in respect to their patients.

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.

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.

Obama's health care plan will be written by a committee whose head John Conyers says he doesn't understand it. It'll be passed by Congress that has not read it signed by a president who smokes funded by a Treasury chief who didn't pay his taxes overseen by a Surgeon General who is obese and financed by a country that's nearly broke. What could possibly go wrong?

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

Yes I've been trepanned. That's quite an interesting experience especially for my brain surgeon who saw my thoughts flying around in my brain.

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.

I'd love to go to art school. I'd love to learn how to draw. I'd love to be fluent in Spanish. I'd like to be a brain surgeon.

Let me alone: I have yet my legs and one arm. Tell the surgeon to make haste and his instruments. I know I must lose my right arm so the sooner it's off the better.