Quotes from Atul Gawande

human beings commonly imagine patterns (whether good or bad) where really there are none.

The battle of being mortal is the battle to maintain the integrity of one's life—to avoid becoming so diminished or dissipated or subjugated that who you are becomes disconnected from who you were or who you want to be. Sickness and old age make the struggle hard enough.

one's willingness to engage in sustained training.

With repetition, a lot of mental functioning becomes automatic and effortless, as when you drive a car to work. Novel situations, however, usually require conscious thought and "workaround" solutions, which are slower to develop, more difficult to execute, and more prone to error.

Human beings, the pioneers were learning, have a need for both privacy and community, for flexible daily rhythms and patterns, and for the possibility of forming caring relationships with those around them.

There are risks to this surgery, but they used to be much greater.

It disturbed me, however, to have felt so confident about what had happened that day and to have been so wrong.

As fewer of us are struck dead out of the blue, most of us will spend significant periods of our lives too reduced and debilitated to live independently. We do not like to think about this eventuality. As a result, most of us are unprepared for it. We rarely pay more than glancing attention to how we will live when we need help until it's too late to do much about it.

top performers dislike practicing just as much as others do.

It is much harder to measure how much more worth people find in being alive than how many fewer drugs they depend on or how much longer they can live. But could anything matter more?

When the attending gave me the go-ahead

and then define a pattern around them.

People with serious illness have priorities besides simply prolonging their lives. Surveys find that their top concerns include avoiding suffering, strengthening relationships with family and friends, being mentally aware, not being a burden on others, and achieving a sense that their life is complete

Medicine has become the art of managing extreme complexity—and a test of whether such complexity can, in fact, be humanly mastered. The

Nonetheless, phobia about Friday the thirteenth is widespread.

That's not my problem" is possibly the worst thing people can think

I had little hope of succeeding.

was willing to make his best effort.

season can affect mood and behavior

My heart dropped.

Culture has tremendous inertia," he said. "That's why it's culture. It works because it lasts. Culture strangles innovation in the crib." To combat the

In most cases, it wasn't technology that failed. Rather, the physicians did not consider the correct diagnosis in the first place.

If any link between psychology and the full moon exists, it would seem to be protective.

In the horrible places, the battle for control escalates until you get tied down or locked into your Geri-chair or chemically subdued with psychotropic medications. In the nice ones, a staff member cracks a joke, wags an affectionate finger, and takes your brownie stash away. In almost none does anyone sit down with you and try to figure out what living a life really means to you under the circumstances, let alone help you make a home where that life becomes possible