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

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.

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.

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

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

Cutting for Stone is nothing short of masterful -a riveting tale of love, medicine, and the complex dynamic of twin brothers. It is beautifully conceived and written. The settings are wonderfully pictorial. There is no doubt in my mind that Cutting for Stone will endure in the permanent literature of our time.