But I couldn’t let myself feel that way until it was all right to. And that’s part of the surgical mind too, addressing what you need to, and you know you can do, and postponing how you feel about it, thinking only of the patient and what you need to do.

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 want my readers to laugh sometimes. Many readers in Japan read my books on the train while commuting. The average salaryman spends two hours a day commuting and he spends those hours reading. That’s why my big books are printed in two volumes: They would be too heavy in one. Some people write me letters, complaining that they laugh when they read my books on the train! It’s very embarrassing for them. Those are the letters I like most. I know they are laughing, reading my books; that’s good. I like to make people laugh every ten pages.

I will say it’s very in a way looks very physical. You know, it’s like a dance. At the end, you are moving your hands in front of an orchestra, your arms, but it’s like a choreography, and that is, that is a dance part of, of conducting. … But at the end, yes, is something that starts from that, but then it gets very deep in a very, I will say philosophical, metaphysical, psychological thing, conducting—more than. Spiritual. It’s more than moving your hands in front of an orchestra and the people watching you jump or move or do these kind of things, it’s something very spiritual, that is right.

Guys who use the word “snot.”

Being with my best friend, who’s a girl.

Peyton Manning.

Convince myself that walking two miles a day isn’t boring.

Does it make a difference? You’re dead.

That they get it.