Everything teeters between pathos and bathos: here you are, violating society's most fundamental taboos and yet formaldehyde is a powerful appetite stimulant, so you also crave a burrito. - Paul Kalanithi
What patients seek is not scientific knowledge that doctors hide but existential authenticity each person must find on her own. Getting too deeply into statistics is like trying to quench a thirst with salty water. The angst of facing mortality has no remedy in probability. - Paul Kalanithi
Science, I had come to learn, is as political, competitive, and fierce a career as you can find, full of the temptation to find easy paths - Paul Kalanithi
Don't you think saying goodbye to your child will make your death more painful?""Wouldn't it be great if it did?" I said. Lucy and I both felt that life wasn't about avoiding suffering. - Paul Kalanithi
The main message of Jesus, I believed, is that mercy trumps justice every time. Not only that, but maybe the basic message of original sin isn't "feel guilty all the time." Maybe it is more along these lines: "We all have a notion of what it means to be good, and we can't live up to it all the time. - Paul Kalanithi
We each joked to close friends that the secret to saving a relationship is for one person to become terminally ill. Conversely, we knew that one trick to managing a terminal illness is to be deeply in love—to be vulnerable, kind, generous, grateful. - Paul Kalanithi
The pain of failure had led me to understand that technical excellence was a moral requirement. - Paul Kalanithi