When Breath Becomes Air

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

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.

If the unexamined life was not worth living, was the unlived life worth examining?

If you had forced me to answer, I suppose I would have said a writer, but frankly, thoughts of any career at this point seemed absurd

You that seek what life is in death,

Now find it air that once was breath.

New names unknown, old names gone:

Till time end bodies, but souls none.

Reader! then make time, while you be,

But steps to your eternity.

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.

the paradox is that scientific methodology is the product of human hands and thus cannot reach some permanent truth.

can’t ever reach perfection, but you can believe in an asymptote toward which you are ceaselessly striving.

Could it wait until tomorrow?

No.

A sigh, and Earth continued to rotate back toward the sun.

Did I make the right choices?”