I contemplate the body, dead and diseased as well as alive and healthy.

The grist for my mill is the human body and the art of healing.

The liver, that great maroon snail: No wave of emotion sweeps it. Neither music nor mathematics gives it pause in its appointed tasks.

A minor operation is one that is done on someone else

Surgery is the red flower that blooms among the leaves and thorns that are the rest of medicine.

I don't dawdle. I'm a surgeon. I make an incision, do what needs to be done and sew up the wound. There is a beginning, a middle and an end.