Selzer Quotes

#1. What Richard Selzer, M.D. once wrote of surgery is true of therapy: only human love keeps this from being the act of two madmen.

Thomas Lewis

#2. You will see at precisely what moment the writer ceases to think of his character as an instrument to be manipulated and think of him as someone with whom he has fallen in love. For it is always, must always be, a matter of love.

Richard Selzer

#3. Whenever I start thinking about death, it always cheers me up to think about my funeral and my tombstone (which, by the way, will say "Here lies Harlan Sturr. Please don't pee on him.")

Adam Selzer

#4. Following the footnotes of a Lincoln book can drive you towards madness. But it also gives you the chance to spend days trying to determine whether Lincoln might have actually taken a ride on a flying piano, and that's a damned interesting way to spend one's working life.

Adam Selzer

#5. There are no "great" subjects for the creative writer; there are only the singular details of a single human life.

Richard Selzer

#6. 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 soul.

Richard Selzer

#7. The liver, that great maroon snail: No wave of emotion sweeps it. Neither music nor mathematics gives it pause in its appointed tasks.

Richard Selzer

#8. A minor operation is one that is done on someone else

Richard Selzer

#9. Some of them are wearing skirts that I'm pretty sure are supposed to be belts.

Adam Selzer

#10. 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

#11. Wow," says Peter, "when your guidance counselor tells you to die, you really have problems.

Adam Selzer

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

Richard Selzer

#13. Isn't it generally known that you have to overlook flaws in people you date, to some extent? I mean, you expect them to overlook your flaws. It's only fair that you overlook some of theirs.

Adam Selzer

#14. I never intended to become a writer.

Richard Selzer

#15. I contemplate the body, dead and diseased as well as alive and healthy.

Richard Selzer

#16. A man does not know whose hands will stroke from him the last bubbles of his life. That alone should make him kinder to strangers.

Richard Selzer

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

Richard Selzer

#18. Did you just hit on her by calling her your cousin?" asks Sadie. "'Cause, damn!

Adam Selzer

#19. 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 what is, the birth of what is to be. You are wine.

Richard Selzer

#20. I mean, who wants to date a guy who thinks a girl who can't operate a fruit cup is attractive?

Adam Selzer

#21. Autopsies give us the facts but not the truth.

Richard Selzer

#22. Surgery is the red flower that blooms among the leaves and thorns that are the rest of medicine.

Richard Selzer

#23. The grist for my mill is the human body and the art of healing.

Richard Selzer

#24. You cannot separate passion from pathology any more than you can separate a person's spirit from his body.

Richard Selzer

#25. Let me get this straight," I say. "You're practically ordering me to die. What kind of guidance counselor are you?

Adam Selzer

#26. There a lot of things I can't do," he says. "With my ... health."
"Well," I say, "can you kiss girls?

Adam Selzer

#27. 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 of the whole corpus.

Richard Selzer

#28. When a girl turns down your advances, the polite thing to do is just move on.

Adam Selzer

#29. I mean, you really can't imagine how awesome coffee tastes, or how awesome it is to hear music, to hear idiots talking ... I mean, it hurts. Everything hurts. But everything in the world is so awesome that sometimes I just can't stand it.

Adam Selzer

#30. Go to college. Have a lot of babies. Break a lot of hearts. And realize every minute of it.

Adam Selzer

#31. If you really like someone, it doesn't matter what their mouth feels or tastes like. The kiss is still awesome.

Adam Selzer

#32. If people understood that doctors weren't divine, perhaps the odor of malpractice might diminish.

Richard Selzer

#33. If I quit surgery, I'd be afraid I'd dry up.

Richard Selzer

#34. When you're dead, everything in the world is like a song that makes you cry.

Adam Selzer

#35. What are you eating?" he ask us.
"Whatever won't kill me, please" I said.
"Whatever don't kill you'll make you stronger" says Eddie, who is always ready with folksy wisdom.
"All right," I say. "Then give me whatever will make me stronger."
"One pizza, coming up.

Adam Selzer