When Breath Becomes Air

by Paul Kalanithi

felt literature provided the best account of the life of the mind, while neuroscience laid down the most elegant rules of the brain.

language of life as experienced—of passion, of hunger, of love—bore some relationship, however convoluted, to the language of neurons, digestive tracts, and heartbeats.

Diseases are molecules misbehaving; the basic requirement of life is metabolism, and death its cessation.

virtue required moral, emotional, mental, and physical excellence.

When there’s no place for the scalpel, words are the surgeon’s only tool.

The root of disaster means a star coming apart,

Death may be a one-time event, but living with terminal illness is a process.

the physician’s duty is not to stave off death or return patients to their old lives, but to take into our arms a patient and family

whose lives have disintegrated and work until they can stand back up and face, and make sense of, their own existence.

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

Some days, I simply persist.

Although these last few years have been wrenching and difficult—sometimes almost impossible—they have also been the most beautiful and profound of my life, requiring the daily act of holding life and death, joy and pain in balance and exploring new depths of gratitude and love.