Paul Kalanithi

She was upset because she had been worried about it, too. She was upset because I wasn’t talking to her about it. She was upset because I’d promised her one life, and given her another.

Prosopagnosia is a neurological disorder wherein one loses the ability to see faces

trapped in an endless jungle summer, wet with sweat, the rain of tears of the families of the dying pouring down.

state population became our barometer for head-injury severity.

Tolstoy’s stereotype of a doctor, preoccupied with empty formalism, focused on the rote treatment of disease—and utterly missing the larger human significance.

guiding a patient or family to an understanding of death or illness.

Getting too deeply into statistics is like trying to quench a thirst with salty water. The angst of facing mortality has no remedy in probability.

Was this a victory or a defeat?

defining characteristic of the organism is striving

It struck me that I had traversed the five stages of grief—the “Denial → Anger → Bargaining → Depression → Acceptance” cliché—but I had done it all backward.