“If ignorance about the nature of pain is widespread, ignorance about the way pain-killing drugs is even more so. What is not generally understood is that many of the vaunted pain-killing drugs conc...”

“Illness is always an interaction between [mind and body]. It can begin in the mind and affect the body, or it can begin in the body and affect the mind, both of which are served by the same bloodst...”

“Suppose I stopped taking aspirin and phenylbutazone? What about the pain? The bones in my spine and practically every joint in my body felt as though I had been run over by a truck. I knew that pai...”

“Time is the one thing that patients need most from their doctors--time to be heard, time to have things explained, time to reassured, time to be introduced by the doctor personally to specialists o...”

“Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live.”

“People who develop the habit of thinking of themselves as world citizens are fulfilling the first requirement of sanity in our time.”

“Tenacity bores failure.”

“Social media: a fine tool for radicalised idiots to find each other, a promised land for the pub bores and Champ Man anoraks of the nation.”

“He is an old bore even the grave yawns for him.”

“Our labour preserves us from three great evils -- weariness, vice, and want.”

“Doing nothing is the hardest torture that a person can put himself through. For he is always brought face to face with his own self, which demands that he gives account for the sun which he useless...”

“We just philosophize, complain of boredom, or drink vodka. It's so clear, you see, that if we're to begin living in the present, we must first of all redeem our past and then be done with it foreve...”