You do not die all at once. Some tissues live on for minutes, even hours, giving still their little cellular shrieks, molecular echoes of the agony of the whole corpus. — Richard Selzer Copy Share Image
You cannot separate passion from pathology any more than you can separate a person's spirit from his body. — Richard Selzer Copy Share Image
And If the surgeon is like a poet, then the scars you have made on countless bodies are like verses into the fashioning of… — Richard Selzer Copy Share Image
Thus is the fruit of the Earth taken, its flesh torn. Thus is it given over standing, toward rot. It is the principle of… — Richard Selzer Copy Share Image
You do not die all at once. Some tissues live on for minutes, even hours, giving still their little cellular shrieks, molecular echoes of… — Richard Selzer Copy Share Image
“You will see at precisely what moment the writer ceases to think of his character as an instrument to be manipulated and think of… — Richard Selzer Copy Share Image
The liver, that great maroon snail: No wave of emotion sweeps it. Neither music nor mathematics gives it pause in its appointed tasks. — Richard Selzer Copy Share Image
Surgery is the red flower that blooms among the leaves and thorns that are the rest of medicine. — Richard Selzer Copy Share Image
If people understood that doctors weren't divine, perhaps the odor of malpractice might diminish. — Richard Selzer Copy Share Image
I contemplate the body, dead and diseased as well as alive and healthy. — Richard Selzer Copy Share Image
The surgeon knows all the parts of the brain but he does not know his patient's dreams. — Richard Selzer Copy Share Image
“There are no "great" subjects for the creative writer; there are only the singular details of a single human life.” — Richard Selzer Copy Share Image
