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In a vague way, I always knew neurosurgery was different - more delicate, more difficult, more demanding. After all, we say things like, 'I'm no brain surgeon,' for a reason.

While all doctors treat diseases, neurosurgeons' work is the crucible of identity. Every operation on the brain is, by necessity, a manipulation of the substance of our selves.

Brain surgery couldn't happen without the patient's own active voice to guide the work. The patient is part of the surgical team here, perhaps the most important part, and above all, that's what makes neurosurgery different.

Most people are overconfident about their own abilities. That is probably a good thing. But we would be horrified if a physician's aide engaged in heart surgery.

Let's not get too precious about it: actors are not heart surgeons or brain surgeons. We are just entertaining people.

Brain surgeons are dealing with the very last thread of life, and they have to be very confident, but I think they tend to remember their failures rather than their successes, and that must be very hard. Who do you share that failure with? That's why their personal lives are often disastrous.

Although surgeons know how to deal with bits of the brain, they don't really know how it works.

Surgeons always underestimate the pain and disability involved in what they do to people.

Committing unnecessary surgeries is very, very rare. And it's very wrong.

I don't like surgery. I don't like elective surgery, I don't like surgery that you have to have.