241 Quotes by Paul Kalanithi

Before operating on a patient's brain, I realized, I must first understand his mind: his identity, his values, what makes his life worth living, & what devastation makes it reasonable to let that life end. The cost of my dedication to succeed was high, & the ineluctable failures brought me nearly unbearable guilt. Those burdens are what make medicine holy & wholly impossible.

I thought back to med school, when a patient had told me that she always wore her most expensive socks to the doctor’s office, so that when she was in a patient’s gown and shoeless, the doctor would see the socks and know she was a person of substance, to be treated with respect.

Neurosurgery attracted me as much for its intertwining of brain & consciousness as for its intertwining of life & death.

the heroic spirit of responsibility amid blood and failure. This struck me as the true image of a doctor.

Words began to feel as weightless as the breath that carried. Stepping back, I realized that I was merely confirming what I already knew: I wanted that direct experience. It was only in practicing medicine that I could pursue a serious biological philosophy. Moral speculation was puny compared to moral action.

Humans are organisms, subject to physical laws, including alas, the one that says entropy always increases. Diseases are molecules misbehaving; the basic requirement of life is metabolism, and death its cessation.

This is how 99% of people select their jobs: pay, work environment, hours. But that's the point. Putting lifestyle first is how you find a job - not a calling.

People often ask if it was calling. My answer always is yes.

There is a tension in the Bible between justice and mercy, between the Old Testament and the New Testament. And the New Testament says you can never be good enough: goodness is the thing, and you can never live up to it. The main message of Jesus, I believed, is that mercy trumps justice every time.