Risa's Quotes

#1. Hole ... " He grips Risa's hand tighter. "Hole, Risa, hole ... " And she smiles "Yes, Connor," she says. "You're whole. You're finally whole.

Neal Shusterman

#2. American healthcare faces a crisis in quality. There is a dangerous divide between the potential for the high level of quality care that our health system promises and the uneven quality that it actually delivers.

Risa Lavizzo-Mourey

#3. I am yours," he whispered. "I live to hold you, Risa. I breathe to touch you.

Lora Leigh

#4. Looks are deceiving," Risa says. "After all, when I first saw you I thought you looked reasonably intelligent.

Neal Shusterman

#5. I see more of what is going on around me because I am not concerned with finding a parking place.

Risa Mickenberg

#6. Traditional nursing facilities are sterile institutions rather than homes - which is why many Americans do not want to live in one or want this as their only option for themselves or their family members.

Risa Lavizzo-Mourey

#7. Big-Picture-speak, Risa calls it. Seeing the whole, and none of the parts.

Neal Shusterman

#8. What happened to the tradition of walking to school? The simple answer is change. Change in traffic patterns and street planning that have made school routes less pedestrian-friendly.

Risa Lavizzo-Mourey

#9. I've been described as impatient.

Risa Lavizzo-Mourey

#10. I think the house call is one of the ways I get an insight into the ways in which people live and the importance of environment in keeping people healthy.

Risa J. Lavizzo-Mourey

#11. Risa: I love you!
Otani: I know.
Risa: And ... you love me too, right, Otani?
Otani: Yeah.
Crowd: *cheers* Good job, buddy!
Risa and Otani: AHHHHH! *runs away*

Atsushi Otani

#12. I grew up with a real appreciation about just how wonderful and intimate the relationship is between a doctor and a patient was and the sense that this was a noble profession.

Risa J. Lavizzo-Mourey

#13. I realized in order to be involved in health policy, you really had to understand more than the individual patient that we as physicians, are taught to think about.

Risa J. Lavizzo-Mourey

#14. She couldn't turn away from the eyes that held her. Eyes as deep, as Dark as the night, yet there was something that sparked with warmth, that kept those eyes from being cold.

Lora Leigh

#15. This is our bottom line: The ways we give should and will evolve to enable us to achieve greater impact to improve the health and health care of all Americans.

Risa Lavizzo-Mourey

#16. Increasingly we know that we're going to have multiple medical conditions, and the person who's got the greatest incentive to manage those conditions is the patient him or herself.

Risa Lavizzo-Mourey

#17. I had an interest in health policy and a realization that, as an academic physician, one of the things you're always looking to do is to have your clinical interests and your scholarly interests overlap and reinforce one another.

Risa Lavizzo-Mourey

#18. We all have to learn how to reengineer healthy living back into our lives.

Risa Lavizzo-Mourey

#19. How many kids are in the Graveyard?"
"A bunch."
"Who sends your supplies?"
"George Washington. Or is it Abraham Lincoln? I forget."
"How often do you receive new arrivals?"
"About as often as you beat your wife.

Neal Shusterman

#20. Older patients who live alone can become depressed.

Risa J. Lavizzo-Mourey

#21. ...any guy can buy you flowers, but the one who buys you hemorrhoid cream must really, really love you.

Risa Green

#22. The people that you work with, the organizations that are committed to the same objectives. If they know that you're in it together, and you're working towards the same objectives, and you agree on how to do more with less, you can actually have a greater impact.

Risa Lavizzo-Mourey

#23. Wars have a way reinventing people. And making too many things disappear.
-Sonia

Neal Shusterman

#24. Otani: Oh no. This is bad.
Risa: What?
Otani: I ... I seem to like you much more than I realized.

Atsushi Otani

#25. I think one key part of doing more with less is to be more strategic, to realize what the objectives you're truly trying to accomplish are and then to drive with greater focus towards those objectives.

Risa Lavizzo-Mourey

#26. I always knew I wanted to be a doctor, but I also knew that being a doctor meant more than treating just the patient in front of you.

Risa Lavizzo-Mourey

#27. Grow it, pick it, and eat it fresh.

Risa Stephanie Bear

#28. My mother was a pediatrician, and she kept busy hours. I learned from her you could pack a lot into the day. Every minute had to count, and multitasking was a given.

Risa Lavizzo-Mourey

#29. I grew up with a lot of dinner table conversations about health care and ways in which the system was inadequate for the needs of many of the patients they took care of.

Risa J. Lavizzo-Mourey

#30. Understand the ways in which your hard work is going to be necessary to achieve the goals that you want.

Risa Lavizzo-Mourey

#31. What is Medicaid all about? It's staying true to the mission: to care for people historically left behind.

Risa Lavizzo-Mourey

#32. I realize there are few sectors that can do what philanthropy does, which is look at big problems, take a long term view, try to develop strategies for addressing the root causes and then go about solving them.

Risa J. Lavizzo-Mourey

#33. The things that are going to actually help you or me stay healthy are not necessarily the things that happen inside a doctor's office. They're the things that allow us to choose healthy lifestyles on a day-by-day basis.

Risa Lavizzo-Mourey

#34. Once I started working with older people, I realized how much I enjoyed the intellectual challenge of taking care of patients who have multiple, complex medical problems.

Risa Lavizzo-Mourey

#35. He (Connor) will only do the wrong thing when it's the right thing to do. - Risa

Neal Shusterman

#36. It is a proud moment when you can define a problem and make a commitment and begin to see a groundswell of activity towards addressing what has the potential to change the life trajectory of millions of kids.

Risa J. Lavizzo-Mourey

#37. [ ... ] every time he forces himself to think before acting, it's her voice in his head telling him to slow down. He wants to tell her, but she's always so busy in the medical jet - and you don't just go to somebody and say, I'm a better person because you're in my head.

Neal Shusterman

#38. It holds no fear for her now, because the shark has been tamed by the soul of a boy. No
the soul of a man.

Neal Shusterman

#39. He will only do the wrong thing when it's the right thing to do..

Neal Shusterman

#40. Which is worse, Risa often wondered, to have tens of thousands of babies that no one wanted or to silently make then go away before they were even born

Neal Shusterman

#41. Progress among the youngest children is especially important because we know that preventing obesity at an early age helps young people maintain a healthy weight into adulthood.

Risa Lavizzo-Mourey

#42. I tell every young woman who asks me, be very careful about your choice of spouse. If you don't have a supportive spouse, it will be difficult to take on so many things.

Risa Lavizzo-Mourey

#43. I wanted to go from seeing the individual patient to seeing the plural - the whole population as a market. You want to see the larger population, yet at the same time you need to understand the impact of decisions on individuals.

Risa Lavizzo-Mourey

#44. I'm against solutions that are worse than the problem. Like old women who want their hair dyed the color of shoe polish to hide the gray.

Neal Shusterman

#45. You don't like her, do you?" "Who, me? No, I love her dearly. Evil scheming bitches are my favorite kind of people." (Risa)

Neal Shusterman

#46. Higher costs naturally translate into fewer employers offering insurance coverage, and fewer employees accepting it, even when it is offered.

Risa Lavizzo-Mourey

#47. And so, as the mob backs away to give them space ... as the riot police holster their weapons, standing down, and as Risa takes the podium, calming the crowd with a voice as soothing as a sonata, Connor Lassiter holds his family like he'll never let them go.

Neal Shusterman

#48. It isn't unusual to see children climb into a car every morning to be ferried to the front door of a school that's just a few blocks away.

Risa Lavizzo-Mourey

#49. I love you, Risa," he says. "Every last part of me.

Neal Shusterman

#50. The causes of obesity are varied and complex, but the lack of daily physical activity is an important factor.

Risa Lavizzo-Mourey

#51. I start my day by trying to be healthy and exercising and thinking about and reading about the challenges. I live the mission that way.

Risa Lavizzo-Mourey

#52. Are they trained to treat everyone as a servant?'
'Probably. That doesn't make you into one,

Sherwood Smith

#53. The woman wears a floral print blouse with lots of leaves and pink flowers. Risa would like to attack her with a weed whacker.

Neal Shusterman