When Breath Becomes Air

by Paul Kalanithi

see what it is to still live, to profoundly influence the lives of others after you are gone, by your words.

Books became my closest confidants, finely ground lenses providing new views of the world.

I was driven less by achievement than by trying to understand, in earnest: What makes human life meaningful?

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

Where did biology, morality, literature, and philosophy intersect?

If the hare makes too many minor missteps and has to keep adjusting, the tortoise wins. If the tortoise spends too much time planning each step, the hare wins.

Neurosurgery requires a commitment to one’s own excellence and a commitment to another’s identity. The decision to operate at all involves an appraisal of one’s own abilities, as well as a deep sense of who the patient is and what she holds dear.

My life had been building potential, potential that would now go unrealized.

I began to realize that coming in such close contact with my own mortality had changed both nothing and everything.

It occurred to me that my relationship with statistics changed as soon as I became one.

life wasn’t about avoiding suffering.