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Probably most dying patients, even when suffering greatly, would choose to live as long as possible. That courage and grace should be protected and honored, and we should put every effort into treating their symptoms.

Working with the dying is like being a midwife for this great rite of passage of death. Just as a midwife helps a being take their first breath, you help a being take their last breath.

I believe it should be possible for someone stricken with a serious and ultimately fatal illness to choose to die peacefully with medical help, rather than suffer.

None of us, in our culture of comfort, know how to prepare ourselves for dying, but that's what we should do every day. Every single day, we die a thousand deaths.

I suppose, if helping a patient die is killing, I suppose I'm a killer.

There is survival behavior, and doctors need to learn from patients who do not die when they are supposed to, instead of saying, 'You're doing very well, so keep doing whatever you are doing.' They should be asking what their patient is doing and pass the information to other patients.

Death is something that happens to others, you think, until it happens to you.

A lot of the qualities in 'Killing and Dying' is sort of a response to work I'd done previously. I wanted to push myself in some different directions.

Before operating on a patient's brain... I must first understand his mind: his identity, his values, what makes his life worth living, and what devastation makes it reasonable to let that life end.