Selzer Quotes

I never intended to become a writer. ~ Richard Selzer

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

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

Wow," says Peter, "when your guidance counselor tells you to die, you really have problems. ~ Adam Selzer

A minor operation is one that is done on someone else ~ Richard Selzer

Some of them are wearing skirts that I'm pretty sure are supposed to be belts. ~ Adam Selzer

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

If I quit surgery, I'd be afraid I'd dry up. ~ Richard Selzer

The Country Doctor Revisited is a fine achievement. Purporting to be an overview of the practice of medicine in rural areas, it is a splendid portrait of the practice of medicine everywhere. The special conditions that prevail in the countryside as opposed to the cities are examined, and each of these is illustrated by a case history that is as compelling as it is informative. It is presented in a highly readable form that would be accessible to the general public as well as to the deliverers of health care. I recommend it most highly. ~ Richard Selzer

Not that anyone minds
no one's paying attention to the music. Most of them never really listen to music. Practically no one actually does. Even at concerts people pay good money for, instead of a three-dollar cover charge, they talk through the whole thing. I feel sorry for them, since none of them understand what it's like to have a song just get into your soul and become your whole world. They don't know what it's like when a song changes your life. ~ Adam Selzer

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

The grist for my mill is the human body and the art of healing. ~ Richard Selzer

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

Surgery is the red flower that blooms among the leaves and thorns that are the rest of medicine. ~ Richard Selzer

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

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

He knows that there is something wrong, forbidden in what he is about to do, but he cannot help himself, for he is a fanatic. He is driven by a dark desire. To see, to feel, to discover is all. His is a passion, not a romance. ~ Richard Selzer

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

I stand by the bed where a young woman lies, her face postoperative, her mouth twisted in palsy, clownish. A tiny twig of the facial nerve, the one to the muscles of her mouth has been severed. She will be thus from now on. The surgeon had followed with religious fervor the curve of her flesh; I promise you that. Nevertheless, to remove the tumor in her cheek, I had to cut the little nerve. Her young husband is in the room. He stand on the opposite side of the bed and together they seem to dwell in the evening lamplight, isolated from me, private. Who are they, I ask myself, he and this wry mouth I have made, who gaze at and touch each other so generously, greedily? The young woman speaks, "Will my mouth always be like this?" she asks. "Yes," I say, "it will. It is because the nerve was cut." She nods and is silent. But the young man smiles. "I like it," he says, "It is kind of cute." "All at once I know who he is. I understand and I lower my gaze. One is not bold in an encounter with a god. Unmindful, he bends to kiss her crooked mouth and I am so close I can see how he twists his own lips to accommodate to hers, to show her that their kiss still works. ~ Richard Selzer

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

And the third is from him: "Second date?"
I immediately text him back: "Hell yeah!"
Then I collapse on my bed and enjoy that "butterflies in the stomach" feeling. I've felt the butterflies before from time to time, but this is the first time I haven't sort of wanted to attack them with a flyswatter. ~ Adam Selzer

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

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

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

Autopsies give us the facts but not the truth. ~ Richard Selzer

The surgeon knows all the parts of the brain but he does not know his patient's dreams. ~ Richard Selzer

I mean, who wants to date a guy who thinks a girl who can't operate a fruit cup is attractive? ~ Adam Selzer

You cannot separate passion from pathology any more than you can separate a person's spirit from his body. ~ Richard Selzer

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was the most sweeping civil rights legislation of its day, and included women's rights as part of its reforms. Ironically, the section on women's rights was added by a senator from Virginia who opposed the whole thing and was said to be sure that if he stuck something about womens' rights into it, it would never pass. The bill passed anyway, though, much to the chagrin of a certain wiener from Virginia. ~ Adam Selzer

When a girl turns down your advances, the polite thing to do is just move on. ~ Adam Selzer

If people understood that doctors weren't divine, perhaps the odor of malpractice might diminish. ~ Richard Selzer