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.

Brave New World

the most intoxicating thing I’d experienced, by far, was the volume of romantic poetry

happiness was not the point of life

Books became my closest confidants, finely ground lenses providing new views of the world.

the two mountain ranges that bounded the town no longer defined the horizon: it was what lay beyond them.

the mind was simply the operation of the brain

I still felt literature provided the best account of the life of the mind, while neuroscience laid down the most elegant rules of the brain.

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

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