“DeBakey was the star; and yet he was troubled by his protege. Denton Cooley was a conjurer at the table, a man with hands that moved so quickly and smoothly it seemed as if he opened and closed his patients with a kind of alchemy. Cooley was everything DeBakey had never been—a tall blond athlete who had always been the most charismatic and popular kid in class. DeBakey's Lebanese parents ran a Louisiana drugstore, while Cooley was the son of a rich society dentist whose family owned a large chunk of north Houston. The pain he caused DeBakey was captured by another Texas surgeon who described Cooley as "the handsomest son of a bitch to ever pick up a scalpel. How'd you like to shave Mike DeBakey's face every morning and then have to look across the table at Denton Cooley?"”

—Donald McRae