And If the surgeon is like a poet, then the scars you have made on countless bodies are like verses into the fashioning of which you have poured your…

- Richard Selzer

Each is like a river that leaves behind its name and shape, the whole course of its path , to vanish into the vast sea of God.

- Richard Selzer

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 o…

- Richard Selzer

A minor operation is one that is done on someone else

- Richard Selzer

The heart is pure theater throbbing in its cage palpably as any nightingale.

- Richard Selzer

Cutting for Stone is nothing short of masterful -a riveting tale of love, medicine, and the complex dynamic of twin brothers. It is beautifully conce…

- Richard Selzer

The surgeon knows all the parts of the brain but he does not know his patient's dreams.

- Richard Selzer

Autopsies give us the facts but not the truth.

- Richard Selzer

Thus is the fruit of the Earth taken, its flesh torn. Thus is it given over standing, toward rot. It is the principle of corruption, the death of wha…

- Richard Selzer