When Breath Becomes Air
medical rite of passage and a trespass on the sacrosanct, engendering a legion of feelings: from revulsion, exhilaration, nausea, frustration, and awe to, as time passes, the mere tedium of academic exercise.
Paul Kalanithi • When Breath Becomes Air
No system of thought can contain the fullness of human experience.
Paul Kalanithi • When Breath Becomes Air
despondency.
Paul Kalanithi • When Breath Becomes Air
sweet affections and austere diktats, hugs and kisses mixed with stony pronouncements: “It’s
Paul Kalanithi • When Breath Becomes Air
Nuland was a renowned surgeon-philosopher whose seminal book about mortality, How We Die, had come out when I was in high school but made it into my hands only in medical school. Few books I had read so directly and wholly
Paul Kalanithi • When Breath Becomes Air
Neurosurgery attracted me as much for its intertwining of brain and consciousness as for its intertwining of life and death.
Paul Kalanithi • When Breath Becomes Air
futurity:
Paul Kalanithi • When Breath Becomes Air
Human knowledge is never contained in one person. It grows from the relationships we create between each other and the world, and still it is never complete.
Paul Kalanithi • When Breath Becomes Air
We build scientific theories to organize and manipulate the world, to reduce phenomena into manageable units. Science is based on reproducibility and manufactured objectivity.