“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
“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
“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
“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
“Learn to be fast now. You can learn to be good later.” In the OR, everyone’s eyes are always on the clock.… — 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
“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
“deck is stacked, that you will lose, that your hands or judgment will slip, and yet still struggle to win for your… — Paul Kalanithi Copy Share Image
“Patients, when hearing the news, mostly remain mute. (One of the early meanings of patient, after all, is “one who endures hardship… — 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
“Weren’t the numbers just the numbers? Had we all just given in to the “hope” that every patient was above average? It… — Paul Kalanithi Copy Share Image
“Even if you are perfect, the world isn’t. The secret is to know that the deck is stacked, that you will lose,… — Paul Kalanithi Copy Share Image
“The root of disaster means a star coming apart, and no image expresses better the look in a patient’s eyes when hearing… — 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
