More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
We create narratives for people, because they are simpler than the complexities of real lives. Everyone wants a good story, with a prince and a princess and a villain. When narratives change, it’s unsettling, because whether or not they’re our own, they help to define us, and we don’t want to let go of them.
Courage is a word I will learn to say; it is part of the vocabulary of cancer—courage, hope, bravery. Before this it was something that a man in a lion’s suit chased. Now it is a word about cancer.
would indeed that love were longer-lived, And vows were not so brittle as they are, But so it is, and nature has contrived To struggle on without a break thus far, Whether or not we find what we are seeking Is idle, biologically speaking. —EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY
close friend of ours is famous for his flower-gardener theory. The very best relationship has one of each. The gardener nurtures, and the flower blooms. We decide that two gardeners might work together, but never two flowers.
Maybe all one can do is hope to end up with the right regrets. —ARTHUR MILLER
It’s a terrible thing to watch someone die. We are angry and desolate, consumed with hate for this disease. It doesn’t help that we have silently sworn to keep up appearances. Things are about to change and never be the same, and it isn’t a quick flick of fate’s wrist but a slow, wrenching turn, as if the power steering has gone out.
feel fortunate. I have an unexpected rush of happiness. The kind of rush you feel when the sun is out and someone loves you and the grass is freshly cut and you can smell clean air. It’s why we struggle to live, I suppose, for these fleeting and unpredictable moments.
There is an imperceptible shift of a life in the moment of time between the event and the knowing. After the thing has happened, but before someone has said it.
This is what it feels like, the click between one life and another. This is the blink of time between the way things are, and then never the same again. Like changing the channel on a television. It’s this way—click—and now it’s this. This, and then this. Fate. Fortune.
