When Breath Becomes Air

by Paul Kalanithi

the most intoxicating thing I’d experienced, by far, was the volume of romantic poetry she’d handed me the previous week. Books became my closest confidants, finely ground lenses providing new views of the world.

Literature not only illuminated another’s experience, it provided, I believed, the richest material for moral reflection.

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

There is a moment, a cusp, when the sum of gathered experience is worn down by the details of living. We are never so wise as when we live in this moment.

Because the brain mediates our experience of the world, any neurosurgical problem forces a patient and family, ideally with a doctor as a guide, to answer this question: What makes life meaningful enough to go on living?

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