“ Everything teeters between pathos and bathos: here you are, violating society's most fundamental taboos and yet formaldehyde is a powerful appetite stimulant, so you also crave a burrito. Paul Kalanithi
“ What patients seek is not scientific knowledge that doctors hide but existential authenticity each person must find on her own. Getting too deeply into statistics is like trying to quench a thirst wit… Paul Kalanithi
“ The main message of Jesus, I believed, is that mercy trumps justice every time. Not only that, but maybe the basic message of original sin isn't "feel guilty all the time." Maybe it is more along thes… Paul Kalanithi
“ What patients seek is not scientific knowledge that doctors hide, but existential authenticity each person must find on her own... the angst of facing mortality has no remedy in probability. Paul Kalanithi
“ Mind was simply the operation of the brain, an idea that struck me with force; it startled my naive understanding of the world Paul Kalanithi
“ As a resident, my highest ideal was not saving lives -- everyone dies eventually -- but guiding a patient or family to an understanding of death or illness. Paul Kalanithi
“ Don't you think saying goodbye to your child will make your death more painful?""Wouldn't it be great if it did?" I said. Lucy and I both felt that life wasn't about avoiding suffering. Paul Kalanithi
“ The pain of failure had led me to understand that technical excellence was a moral requirement. Paul Kalanithi
“ Science is based on reproducibility and manufactured objectivity. As strong as that makes its ability to generate claims about matter and energy, it also makes scientific knowledge inapplicable to the… Paul Kalanithi
“ People react differently to hearing 'Procedure X has a 70 percent chance of survival' and 'Procedure Y has a 30 percent chance of death.' Phrased that way, people flock to Procedure X, even though the… Paul Kalanithi
“ Satan: His Psychotherapy and Cure by the Unfortunate Dr. Kassler, J.S.P.S., by Jeremy Leven. Paul Kalanithi
“ It was a five-hundred-page novel called Satan: His Psychotherapy and Cure by the Unfortunate Dr. Kassler, J.S.P.S., by Jeremy Leven. I took it home and read it in a day. It wasn’t high culture. It sho… Paul Kalanithi
“ Human knowledge is never contained in one person. It grows from the relationships we create between each other and the world, and still, it is never complete. Paul Kalanithi
“ In the end, it cannot be doubted that each of us can see only a part of the picture. The doctor sees one, the patient another, the engineer a third, the economist a fourth, the pearl diver a fifth, th… Paul Kalanithi
“ There is a tension in the Bible between justice and mercy, between the Old Testament and the New Testament. And the New Testament says you can never be good enough: goodness is the thing, and you can… Paul Kalanithi
“ Dying in one’s fourth decade is unusual now, but dying is not. “The thing about lung cancer is that it’s not exotic,” Paul wrote in an email to his best friend, Robin. “The reader can get into these s… Paul Kalanithi
“ Words began to feel as weightless as the breath that carried. Stepping back, I realized that I was merely confirming what I already knew: I wanted that direct experience. It was only in practicing med… Paul Kalanithi
“ Time for me is now double-edged: every day brings me further from the low of my last relapse but closer to the next recurrence - and, eventually, death. Perhaps later than I think, but certainly soone… Paul Kalanithi
“ Before operating on a patient's brain, I realized, 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 li… Paul Kalanithi
“ Anatomy lab, in the end, becomes less a violation of the sacred and more something that interferes with happy hour, and that realization discomfits. In our rare reflective moments, we were all silentl… Paul Kalanithi
