Oliver Sacks remains my hero to this day. He was one of the first medical writers I read. The other was Lewis Thomas, who is no longer alive but is just heroic to me. — Atul Gawande Copy Share Image
Go back to the '30s, '40s, '50s, and it was the discovery of heroic interventions, the ability to cure people with penicillin or do an operation to stop disease that was what saved the day. Primary care physicians couldn't do… — Atul Gawande Copy Share Image
Don’t let yourself be. Find something new to try, something to change. Count how often it succeeds and how often it doesn’t. Write about… — Atul Gawande Copy Share Image
“Wilson spent several days camped out in one government office after another until she had secured an exemption. Unbelievably, she and her husband cleared… — Atul Gawande Copy Share Image
What is needed, however, isn't just that people working together be nice to each other. It is discipline. Discipline is hard--harder than trustworthiness and… — Atul Gawande Copy Share Image
“8. Chapter 4 describes the birth of the assisted-living facility concept (Park Place), designed by Keren Wilson to provide her disabled mother, Jessie, with… — Atul Gawande Copy Share Image
When we lived in a society where we had large families that lived together, especially in agricultural societies like my grandfather and father grew… — Atul Gawande Copy Share Image
My biggest fear, that 27 percent of Americans under 65 have an existing health condition that, without the protections of the Affordable Care Act,… — Atul Gawande Copy Share Image
“..how we seek to spend our time may depend on how much time we perceive ourselves to have. When you are young and healthy,… — Atul Gawande Copy Share Image
“I cannot pretend he escaped unscathed. The extended period of low blood pressure damaged an optic nerve and left him essentially blind in one… — Atul Gawande Copy Share Image
The battle of being mortal is the battle to maintain the integrity of one’s life, — Atul Gawande Copy Share Image
“an average of $94,000 during the last year of life with a metastatic breast cancer. Our medical system is excellent at trying to stave… — Atul Gawande Copy Share Image
“we need practice to get good at what we do. There is one difference in medicine, though: it is people we practice upon.” — Atul Gawande Copy Share Image
People underestimate the importance of dilligence as a virtue. No doubt it has something to do with how supremely mundane it seems. It is… — Atul Gawande Copy Share Image
