“I struggled, while facing my own death, to rebuild my old life—or perhaps find a new one.” — Paul Kalanithi Copy Share Image
“When a patient comes in with a fatal head bleed, that first conversation with a neurosurgeon may forever color how the family… — Paul Kalanithi Copy Share Image
“I acted not, as I most often did, as death’s enemy, but as its ambassador. I had to help those families understand… — Paul Kalanithi Copy Share Image
“I didn’t know. But if I did not know what I wanted, I had learned something, something not found in Hippocrates, Maimonides,… — 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
“Paul’s decision not to avert his eyes from death epitomizes a fortitude we don’t celebrate enough in our death-avoidant culture. His strength… — Paul Kalanithi Copy Share Image
“Webster was much possessed by death And saw the skull beneath the skin; And breastless creatures under ground Leaned backward with a… — 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
“This book carries the urgency of racing against time, of having important things to say. Paul confronted death—examined it, wrestled with it,… — Paul Kalanithi Copy Share Image
“How much neurologic suffering would you let your child endure before saying that death is preferable?” — 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
“Time for me is now double-edged: every day brings me further from the low of my last relapse but closer to the… — Paul Kalanithi Copy Share Image
“I had to help those families understand that the person they knew—the full, vital independent human—now lived only in the past and… — Paul Kalanithi Copy Share Image
“After so many years of living with death, I’d come to understand that the easiest death wasn’t necessarily the best.” — Paul Kalanithi Copy Share Image
“In these moments, I acted not, as I most often did, as death’s enemy, but as its ambassador. I had to help… — 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
“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
“(...) the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” — 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
“Will having a newborn distract from the time we have together?" she asked. "Don't you think saying goodbye to your child will… — Paul Kalanithi Copy Share Image
“I had started in this career, in part, to pursue death: to grasp it, uncloak it, and see it eye-to-eye, unblinking.” — Paul Kalanithi Copy Share Image
“As a resident, my highest ideal was not saving lives—everyone dies eventually—but guiding a patient or family to an understanding of death… — 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 Image
“If the unexamined life was not worth living, was the unlived life worth examining?” — Paul Kalanithi Copy Share Image
“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 Image
“...but every day felt full of life, and of the relationships that give life meaning.” — Paul Kalanithi Copy Share Image
“I struggled, while facing my own death, to rebuild my old life—or perhaps find a new one.” — Paul Kalanithi Copy Share Image
“I had come to see language as an almost supernatural force, existing between people,” — Paul Kalanithi Copy Share Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
