Erich Segal Quotes

#1. I urge you to engrave this on the template of your memories: there are thousands of diseases in this world, but Medical Science only has an empirical cure for twenty-six of them. The rest is ... guesswork.

Erich Segal

#2. What term do you employ when you speak of your progenitor?"
I answered with the term I'd always wanted to employ.
"Sonovabitch."
"To his face?" she asked.
"I never see his face."
"He wears a mask?"
"In a way, yes. Of stone. Of absolute stone.

Erich Segal

#3. I think the Peace Corps is a fine thing, don't you?" he said.
"Well," I replied, "it's certainly better than War Corps.

Erich Segal

#4. Her handwriting was curious - small sharp little letters with no capitals (who did she think she was, e. e. cummings?).

Erich Segal

#5. Living better is the best revenge

Erich Segal

#6. He had spent most of his lifetime studying the art of medicine and realized now that he would never really understand its mysteries.
For medicine is an eternal quest for reasons - causes that explain effects.
Science cannot comprehend a miracle.

Erich Segal

#7. Sometimes I ask myself what I would be if Jenny were alive.
And then I answer:I would also be alive.

Erich Segal

#8. Either way I don't come first, which for some stupid reason bothers hell out of me, having grown up with the notion that I always had to be number one. Family heritage, don't you know?

Erich Segal

#9. There was a brief silence. I think I heard snow falling.

Erich Segal

#10. Sometimes I ask myself what would I be if Jenny were alive.
And then I answer :
I would also be alive. - Oliver.

Erich Segal

#11. Sometimes I amaze even myself.

Erich Segal

#12. This isn't a watercolor, it's a mural.

Erich Segal

#13. It scarcely made a column of newspaper space, but it wrote headlines in their lives.

Erich Segal

#14. True love comes quietly, without banners or flashing lights. If you hear bells, get your ears checked.

Erich Segal

#15. He had then warned his daughter not to violate the Eleventh Commandment.
"Which one is that?" I asked her.
"Do not bullshit thy father," she said.

Erich Segal

#16. And then I did what I had never done in his presence, much less in his arms. I cried.

Erich Segal

#17. What can you say about a twenty-five year old girl who died? That she was beautiful and brilliant. That she loved Mozart and Bach. The Beatles. And me.

Erich Segal

#18. Quiet heroism or youthful idealism, or both? What do we know? That life without heroism and idealism is not worth living - or that either can be fatal?

Erich Segal

#19. He would not question Barretto's love, since to know Jenny is to love Jenny; it's a universal truth

Erich Segal

#20. They glanced at one another like tigers taking measure of a menacing new rival. But in this kind of jungle you could never be sure where the real danger lurked.

Erich Segal

#21. Although science could pinpoint the exact spot in the brain that ignites rage, they had yet to identify the location that produces love.

Erich Segal

#22. The pain of not knowing what to do was exceeded only by that of knowing what I had done.

Erich Segal

#23. The 'equilibrium' that people see in me is really an illusion. I am as flawed as anyone. It's only that I seem to have the knack of hiding.

Erich Segal

#24. What the hell makes you so smart?" I asked. "I wouldn't go for coffee with you, " she answered. "Listen
I wouldn't ask you." "That, "she replied "is what makes you stupid.

Erich Segal

#25. Some were brilliant bordering on genius. Others, genius bordering on madness

Erich Segal

#26. Deep down I'm still afraid, but at least I can deal with it.

Erich Segal

#27. a real physician almost never seeks another doctor's help. For they all are painfully aware of just how little anybody understands about curing the sick.

Erich Segal

#28. Part of being a big winner is the ability to be a big loser. There is no paradox involved. It is a distinctly Harvard thing to be able to turn any defeat into victory

Erich Segal

#29. I was afraid of being rejected, yes. I was also afraid of being accepted for the wrong reasons.

Erich Segal

#30. Please, if one of us cries, let both of us cry. But preferably neither of us.

Erich Segal

#31. Love Means Not Ever Having To Say You're Sorry.

Erich Segal

#32. I went into Harvard one way and came out a different person ... It's the air at Harvard; it's like a Renaissance court.

Erich Segal

#33. Something may have been lost in translation, but it certainly wasn't love

Erich Segal

#34. Professors of classics - not even a professor of English - professors of classics, they're something sacred; it's almost like being a priest.

Erich Segal