Cutting for Stone Quotes

Encouraged by the old surgical saw "Any idiot can amputate a led," Ghosh had decided to proceed. If he hesitated, it was because the rest of the saying went "but it takes a skilled surgeon to save one."

Worry and anxiety are sand in the machinery of life, and faith is the oil.

Sometimes we have to “live the question,” not push for the answer.

In a time of deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.

All possibilities resided within me, and they required me to be here. If I left, what would be left of me?

... How we treat the least of out brethren, how we treat the peasant suffering with volvulus, that's the measure of this country. Not our fighter planes or tanks, or how big the Emperor's palace happens to be ...

When she walked away I felt the weight of what she left unsaid. I wanted to call after her, Ma! You have it all wrong. But just as she kept her thoughts to herself, I was learning to do the same. This was what growing up was about: hide the corpse, don't bare your heart, do make assumptions about the motives of others. They're certainly doing all these things to you.

But you reach a point where after trying and trying you say, Patience be damned. Let them suffer their distorted worldview. Your job is to preserve yourself, not to descend into their hole. It's a relief when you arrive at this place, the point of absurdity, because then you are free, you know you owe them nothing.

You can’t set out to achieve your goals without a little madness.

Roses would be annoying weeds if the blooms never withered and died. Beauty resides in the knowledge that it doesn’t last.

We don’t have children to fulfill our dreams. Children allow us to let go of the dreams we were never meant to fulfill.

A rich man's faults are covered with money, but a surgeon's faults are covered with earth.

Ghosh trusted me to do whatever it is I would choose to do. That, too, is love. He'd been dead more than a quarter century and he was still teaching me about the trust that comes only from true love.

All my ghosts had vanished; the retribution that they sought had been exacted. I had nothing more to give and nothing to fear.

Ghosh sighed. "I hope one day you see this as clearly as I did in Kerchele. The key to your happiness is to own your own slippers, own who you are, own how you look, own your family, own the talents you have, and the ones you don't. If you keep saying your slippers aren't yours, then you'll die searching, you'll die bitter, always feeling you were promised more. Not only your actions, but also our omissions, become our destiny."