Lewis Thomas Quotes

Endorphins are a very powerful thing.

"I'm so sorry," I whisper. I lean forward and kiss him. His eyelashes flutter and he looks at me through a haze of opiates. "Hey, Catnip." "Hey, Gale," I say. "Thought you'd be gone by now," he says. My choices are simple. I can die like a quarry in the woods or I can die here beside Gale. "I'm not going anywhere. I'm going to stay right here and cause all kinds of trouble." "Me, too," Gale says. He just manages a smile before the drugs pull him back under.

My own training is in the field of neuroendocrinology and I really became very fascinated many years ago with the molecules of emotion, molecules that we call neuropeptides.

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.

My ultimate aim is to make euthanasia a positive experience.

Illness and death are not optional. Patients have a right to determine how they approach them.

Attention is the way social primates measure status. It is highly rewarding because it causes the release of brain chemicals such as dopamine and endorphins.

Your brain is triggered to produce.

Cocoa boosts brain serotonin. Almost every single antidepressant aims at either enhancing serotonin or keeping it in the brain longer. Chocolate or cocoa does that very well.

My death will be caused by morphine, which I have deliberately taken with suicidal intent.

Any kind of novelty or excitement drives up dopamine in the brain, and dopamine is associated with romantic love.

My father was in terrible pain towards the end because of his bed sores, and he did go into hospice, and I think that was better in some ways. You know, I think his death was peaceful, and it was all right. He was just in terrible pain.

My father's death from prostate cancer in 1993 was tragic. He never complained about pain. He was a fighter. By the time he was ready to die he wasn't able to die in the way that he wanted to, which seemed an outrage to me.

My wife Lucy was very sick for nearly three years prior to her death. At one time, I was in the hospital with her for six months.

When death is imminent and dying patients find their suffering unbearable, then the physician's role should shift from healing to relieving suffering in accord with the patient's wishes.

Adrenaline is wonderful. It covers pain. It covers dementia. It covers everything.

When you release endorphins, you just feel good.

I'm trying to die correctly, but it's very difficult, you know.

There is physical evidence of the body's response to doing good. Endorphins are released in the brain when you do something for someone else. Doing good really feels good.

My mother died of metastatic colorectal cancer shortly before three P.M. on Christmas Day of 2008. I don't know the exact time of her death, because none of us thought to look at a clock for a while after she stopped breathing.

I think some people do want to die, and they will get a disease. There are people who know their lives are so troubled, and their bodies are getting them out of here.

AIDS killed him, but our health care system tortured him.

We could keep his body going, but it was trying its hardest to die.

Sugar and chocolate, anything that boosts your serotonin levels, is something people, I think, crave.

I would like to avoid dying if possible. I do like living! The worst, I think for me, though, would be a really bedridden death.