Paul Kalanithi

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

— Paul Kalanithi

“My imagined future and my personal identity collapsed.”

— Paul Kalanithi

“Maybe life is merely an “instant,” too brief to consider.”

— Paul Kalanithi

“What makes human life meaningful?”

— Paul Kalanithi

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

— Paul Kalanithi

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

— Paul Kalanithi

“After so many years of living with death, I’d come to understand that the easiest death wasn’t necessarily the best.”

— Paul Kalanithi

“(...) the question is not simply wether to live or die but what kind of life is worth living.”

— Paul Kalanithi

“In the silences between his words, listen to what you have to say back. Therein lies his message.”

— Paul Kalanithi

“Satan: His Psychotherapy and Cure by the Unfortunate Dr. Kassler, J.S.P.S., by Jeremy Leven.”

— Paul Kalanithi

“It’s very easy to be number one: find the guy who is number one, and score one point higher than he does.”

— Paul Kalanithi

“Getting too deeply into statistics is like trying to quench a thirst with salty water.”

— Paul Kalanithi

“Science, I had come to learn, is as political, competitive, and fierce a career as you can find, full of the temptation…

— Paul Kalanithi

“There is perhaps only one thing to say to this infant, who is all future, overlapping briefly with me, whose life, barring…

— Paul Kalanithi

“And as I sat there, I realized that the questions intersecting life, death, and meaning, questions that all people face at some…

— 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…

— Paul Kalanithi

“The doctor will be in soon.” And with that, the future I had imagined, the one just about to be realized, the…

— Paul Kalanithi

“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

“Graham Greene once said that life was lived in the first twenty years and the remainder was just reflection. So what tense…

— 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

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

— Paul Kalanithi

“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

“In my life, had I ever made a decision harder than choosing between a French dip and a Reuben? How could I…

— Paul Kalanithi

“Yet I returned to the central values of Christianity - sacrifice, redemption, forgiveness - because I found them so compelling. There is…

— Paul Kalanithi

“I still had a lot of practical medicine to learn, but would knowledge alone be enough, with life and death hanging in…

— 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

“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

“if you believe that science provides no basis for God, then you are almost obligated to conclude that science provides no basis…

— Paul Kalanithi

“Of course, the cadavers, in life, donated themselves freely to this fate, and the language surrounding the bodies in front of us…

— Paul Kalanithi

“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

“Be ready. Be seated. See what courage sounds like. See how brave it is to reveal yourself in this way. But above…

— Paul Kalanithi

“life had been building potential, potential that would now go unrealized. I had planned to do so much, and I had come…

— 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

“Be ready. Be seated. See what courage sounds like. See how brave it is to reveal yourself in this way. But above…

— Paul Kalanithi

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

— Paul Kalanithi

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

— Paul Kalanithi

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

— Paul Kalanithi

“Who would I be, going forward, and for how long? (...) Who could, or should, I be?”

— Paul Kalanithi

“I had met her in a space where she was a person, instead of a problem to be solved.”

— Paul Kalanithi

“The news hit Paul hard. He said little, but as a neurosurgeon, he knew what lay ahead.”

— Paul Kalanithi