241 Quotes by Paul Kalanithi

Science may provide the most useful way to organize empirical, reproducible data, but its power to do so is predicated on its inability to grasp the most central aspects of human life: hope, fear, love, hate, beauty, envy, honor, weakness, striving, suffering, virtue.

I can’t go on. I’ll go on.

The curse of cancer created a strange and strained existence, challenging me to be neither blind to, nor bound by, death’s approach. Even when the cancer was in retreat, it cast long shadows. When.

Maybe, in the absence of any certainty, we should just assume that we’re going to live a long time. Maybe that’s the only way forward.

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

Hemingway described his process in similar terms: acquiring rich experiences, then retreating to cogitate and write about them. I needed words to go forward. And so it was literature that brought.

To me, that hardness always seems brittle, unrealistic optimism the only alternative to crushing despair.

Surely intelligence wasn’t enough; moral clarity was needed as well.

Getting too deeply into statistics is like trying to quench a thirst with salty water.