“...but every day felt full of life, and of the relationships that give life meaning.” — Paul Kalanithi Copy Share Image
“(...) the question is not simply wether to live or die but what kind of life is worth living.” — Paul Kalanithi Copy Share Image
“If the unexamined life was not worth living, was the unlived life worth examining?” — Paul Kalanithi Copy Share Image
“(...) the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” — Paul Kalanithi Copy Share Image
“Maybe Beckett's Pozzo is right. Maybe life is merely an "instant", too brief to consider.” — Paul Kalanithi Copy Share Image
“And as I sat there, I realized that the questions intersecting life, death, and meaning, questions that all people face at some… — Paul Kalanithi Copy Share Image
“I still had a lot of practical medicine to learn, but would knowledge alone be enough, with life and death hanging in… — Paul Kalanithi Copy Share Image
“There is perhaps only one thing to say to this infant, who is all future, overlapping briefly with me, whose life, barring… — Paul Kalanithi Copy Share Image
“Humans are organisms, subject to physical laws, including, alas, the one that says entropy always increases. Diseases are molecules misbehaving; the basic… — Paul Kalanithi Copy Share Image
“It is to say, though, that if you believe that science provides no basis for God, then you are almost obligated to… — Paul Kalanithi Copy Share Image
“I was driven less by achievement than by trying to understand, in earnest: What makes human life meaningful? I still felt literature… — Paul Kalanithi Copy Share Image
“Graham Greene once said that life was lived in the first twenty years and the remainder was just reflection. So what tense… — Paul Kalanithi Copy Share Image
“In my life, had I ever made a decision harder than choosing between a French dip and a Reuben? How could I… — Paul Kalanithi Copy Share Image
“My brief forays into the formal ethics of analytic philosophy felt dry as a bone, missing the messiness and weight of real… — Paul Kalanithi Copy Share Image
“And as I sat there, I realised that the questions intersecting life, death, and meaning, questions that all people face at some… — Paul Kalanithi Copy Share Image
“if you believe that science provides no basis for God, then you are almost obligated to conclude that science provides no basis… — Paul Kalanithi Copy Share Image
“They wrapped her in blankets and handed her to me. Feeling her weight in one arm, and gripping Lucy’s hand with the… — Paul Kalanithi Copy Share Image
“By the end of medical school, most students tended to focus on "lifestyle" specialities - those with more humane hours, higher salaries,… — Paul Kalanithi Copy Share Image
“Once I had been diagnosed with a terminal illness, I began to view the world through two perspectives; I was starting to… — Paul Kalanithi Copy Share Image
“Death comes for all of us. For us, for our patients: it is our fate as living, breathing, metabolizing organisms. Most lives… — Paul Kalanithi Copy Share Image
“life had been building potential, potential that would now go unrealized. I had planned to do so much, and I had come… — Paul Kalanithi Copy Share Image
“Of course, the cadavers, in life, donated themselves freely to this fate, and the language surrounding the bodies in front of us… — Paul Kalanithi Copy Share Image
“operative risk, it was the best kind of tumor to have, and the best place to have it; surgery would almost certainly eliminate her… — Paul Kalanithi Copy Share
“If the unexamined life was not worth living, was the unlived life worth examining?” — Paul Kalanithi Copy Share
“Yet the paradox is that scientific methodology is the product of human hands and thus cannot reach some permanent truth. We build scientific theories… — Paul Kalanithi Copy Share
“...but every day felt full of life, and of the relationships that give life meaning.” — Paul Kalanithi Copy Share
“I struggled, while facing my own death, to rebuild my old life—or perhaps find a new one.” — Paul Kalanithi Copy Share
“I had come to see language as an almost supernatural force, existing between people,” — Paul Kalanithi Copy Share
“When a patient comes in with a fatal head bleed, that first conversation with a neurosurgeon may forever color how the family remembers the… — Paul Kalanithi Copy Share
“To the east, the full light of day beamed toward you; to the west, night reigned with no hint of surrender. No philosopher can… — Paul Kalanithi Copy Share
“I acted not, as I most often did, as death’s enemy, but as its ambassador. I had to help those families understand that the… — Paul Kalanithi Copy Share
“A scan showed that a benign brain tumor was pressing on her right frontal lobe. In terms of operative risk, it was the best… — Paul Kalanithi Copy Share
“Now more than ever, you have to be there for each other. I don’t want either of you staying up all night at the… — Paul Kalanithi Copy Share
“The funny thing about time in the OR, whether you race frenetically or proceed steadily, is that you have no sense of it passing.… — Paul Kalanithi Copy Share
“Learn to be fast now. You can learn to be good later.” In the OR, everyone’s eyes are always on the clock. For the… — Paul Kalanithi Copy Share
“I felt that the last thing he needed was the obligation to service a new friendship.” — Paul Kalanithi Copy Share
