When breath becomes air quotations

need a good cry? read this book: Paul Kalanithi - When Breath Becomes Air
dammit, read this fucking book anyway.

"And medical schools have discontinued the support of the practice of robbing graves to procure cadavers--that looting itself and vast improvement over murder, a means once common enough to warrant its own verb: burke, which the OED defines as 'to kill secretly by suffocation or strangulation, or for the purpose of selling the victims body for dissection.'" p47

"An alcoholic, his blood no longer able to clot, who bled to death into his joints and under his skin. Every day the bruises would spread. Before he became delirious, he looked up at me and said, "it's not fair--I've been diluting my drinks with water.'" p77

"The root of disaster means start coming apart, and no image expresses better the look in a patient's eyes when hearing a neurosurgeon's diagnosis. Sometimes the news so shocks in mind that the brain suffers an electrical short. This phenomenon is known as a "psychogenic" syndrome, a severe version of the swoon some experience after hearing bad news... One of my patients, upon being diagnosed with brain cancer, fell suddenly into a coma.  I ordered a battery of labs, scans, and EEGs, searching for a cause, without result. The definitive test was the simplest: I raised the patient's arm above his face to let go. A patient in a psychogenic coma contains just enough volition to avoid hitting himself. The treatment consists in speaking reassuringly, until your words connect and the patient awakens." p90-91

"The word hope first appeared in English about a thousand years ago, denoting some combination of confidence and desire." p133

"If the weight of mortality does not get lighter, does it at least to get more familiar?" p 138

"Moral duty has weight, things that have weight have gravity, and so the duty to bear mortal responsibility pulled me back into the operating room." p151

"...mercy trumps justice every time." p171

and finally: "I don't want to learn about your worries by accident." because this is how how my deepest worries are usually expressed.