241 Quotes by Paul Kalanithi

Literature not only illuminated another’s experience, it provided, I believed, the richest material for moral reflection. My brief forays into the formal ethics of analytic philosophy felt dry as a bone, missing the messiness and weight of real human life.

He, uh – he apparently had a difficult complication, and his patient died. Last night he climbed onto the roof of a building and jumped off. I don’t really know anything else.” I searched for a question to bring understanding. None was forthcoming. I could only imagine the overwhelming guilt, like a tidal wave, that had lifted him up and off that building.

You that seek what life is in death, Now find it air that once was breath. New names unknown, old names gone: Till time end bodies, but souls none. Reader! then make time, while you be, But steps to your eternity. – Baron Brooke Fulke Greville, “Caelica 83.

Standing at the crossroads where I should have been able to see and follow the footprints of the countless patients I had treated over the years, I saw instead only a blank, a harsh, vacant, gleaming white desert, as if a sandstorm had erased all trace of familiarity.

I could hear Emma’s voice again: You have to figure out what’s most important to you. If.

Suddenly, now, I know what I want. I want the counselors to build a pyre... and let my ashes drop and mingle with the sand. Lose my bones amongst the driftwood, my teeth amongst the sand... I don’t believe in the wisdom of children, nor in the wisdom of the old. 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.

A tureen of tragedy was best allotted by the spoonful. Only a few patients demanded the whole at once; most needed time to digest.

This is not the end. Or even the beginning of the end. This is just the end of the beginning.

With little to distinguish one day from the next, time has begun to feel static. In English, we use the word time in different ways: “The time is two forty-five” versus “I’m going through a tough time.” These days, time feels less like the ticking clock and more like a state of being.