Paul Kalanithi

“operative risk, it was the best kind of tumor to have, and the best place to have it; surgery would almost certainly…

— Paul Kalanithi

“If the unexamined life was not worth living, was the unlived life worth examining?”

— Paul Kalanithi

“Yet the paradox is that scientific methodology is the product of human hands and thus cannot reach some permanent truth. We build…

— Paul Kalanithi

“...but every day felt full of life, and of the relationships that give life meaning.”

— Paul Kalanithi

“I struggled, while facing my own death, to rebuild my old life—or perhaps find a new one.”

— Paul Kalanithi

“My imagined future and my personal identity collapsed.”

— Paul Kalanithi

“I had come to see language as an almost supernatural force, existing between people,”

— Paul Kalanithi

“When a patient comes in with a fatal head bleed, that first conversation with a neurosurgeon may forever color how the family…

— Paul Kalanithi

“To the east, the full light of day beamed toward you; to the west, night reigned with no hint of surrender. No…

— Paul Kalanithi

“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

“A scan showed that a benign brain tumor was pressing on her right frontal lobe. In terms of operative risk, it was…

— Paul Kalanithi

“Now more than ever, you have to be there for each other. I don’t want either of you staying up all night…

— Paul Kalanithi

“The funny thing about time in the OR, whether you race frenetically or proceed steadily, is that you have no sense of…

— Paul Kalanithi

“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

“I felt that the last thing he needed was the obligation to service a new friendship.”

— Paul Kalanithi

“The word hope first appeared in English about a thousand years ago, denoting some combination of confidence and desire. But what I…

— Paul Kalanithi

“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

“The defining characteristic of the organism is striving.”

— Paul Kalanithi

“a family will visit constantly, daily or even twice a day. Then maybe every other day. Then just weekends. After months or…

— Paul Kalanithi

“Death comes for all of us. For us, for our patients: it is our fate as living, breathing, metabolizing organisms. Most lives…

— Paul Kalanithi

“Human knowledge is never contained in one person. It grows from the relationships we create between each other and the world, and…

— Paul Kalanithi

“A sigh, and Earth continued to rotate back toward the sun.”

— Paul Kalanithi

“Surely intelligence wasn't enough; moral clarity was needed as well.”

— Paul Kalanithi

“I want everyone to know that even if I don’t see them, I love them. I cherish their friendship, and one more…

— Paul Kalanithi

“(...) in taking up another's cross, one must sometimes get crushed by the weight.”

— Paul Kalanithi