I wish I had known how to “manage up.” I wish I had not believed that my work would speak for itself; the working world requires a bit more than that.

You must find a way to get in the way, you must find a way to get into trouble — good trouble, necessary trouble.

Life doesn't offer you the perfect opportunity at the perfect time. Opportunities come when you least expect them ... Rarely are opportunities presented to you in a perfect way. In a nice little box with a yellow bow on top. ‘Here, open it, it's perfect. You'll love it.’ Opportunities -- the good ones -- are messy, confusing and hard to recognize. They're risky. They challenge you.

Do a deep reflection on what exactly went wrong and write it down. Please don't do that lazy analysis where you just blame government, the economy, the markets, fundraising etc. It might have been a contributing factor and you should reflect that but please do that uncomfortably deep and introspective work of figuring out where *YOU* the founder went wrong.

I’ve done almost 4,000 operations for brain tumors. I’m thinking of what’s going to happen ten or 12 steps before. I’m anticipating what’s going to happen in the operation, and I’m comfortable with where we are.

I remember reading The Making of a Surgeon when I was in probably about the sixth or seventh grade. And that was a book that kind of got me focused, I think, on the career path. And I remember, one thing in there I still remember is that you can always tell you’ve really arrived as a surgeon when the nurses in the hospital ask you to be their physician.