“I stand by the bed where a young woman lies, her face postoperative, her mouth twisted in palsy, clownish. A tiny twig of the facial nerve, the one to the muscles of her mouth has been severed. She will be… — 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
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
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
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
“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
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
Surgery is the red flower that blooms among the leaves and thorns that are the rest of medicine. — Richard Selzer Copy Share
If people understood that doctors weren't divine, perhaps the odor of malpractice might diminish. — Richard Selzer Copy Share
The surgeon knows all the parts of the brain but he does not know his patient's dreams. — Richard Selzer Copy Share
“There are no "great" subjects for the creative writer; there are only the singular details of a single human life.” — Richard Selzer Copy Share
