When Breath Becomes Air

by Paul Kalanithi

Nobody has it coming.

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

The main message of Jesus, I believed, is that mercy trumps justice every time.

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.

Paul faced each stage of his illness with grace—not with bravado or a misguided faith that he would “overcome” or “beat” cancer but with an authenticity that allowed him to grieve the loss of the future he had planned and forge a new one. He

“We shall rise insensibly, and reach the tops of the everlasting hills, where the winds are cool and the sight is glorious.