“After I heard that I had had a heart attack, how I lived in my body changed, and my doctor should have found a way to let me know he recognized that.”

“At home there were cards and calls from friends and family. I heard from people I had not seen in years and was surprised they even knew I had cancer. These messages in particular gave me what I think ill people need most, a sense that many others, more than you can think of, care deeply that you live.”

“When I was very ill, I watched people out running and loved their capacity for movement, their freedom within their bodies. My hope was that they also valued what they were able to be.”

“The demand being made of me was to treat the breakdown as if fear and frustration were not a part of it, to act as if my life, the whole life, has not changed.”

“Once the body has known death, it never lives the same again.”

“After this, I couldn't hear their voices any longer; for in my ears I heard a sound like a bird's wings flapping in panic. Perhaps it was my heart, I don't know. But if you've ever seen a bird trapped inside the great hall of a temple, looking for some way out, well, that was how my mind was reacting. It had never occurred to me that my mother wouldn't simply go on being sick. I won't say I'd never wondered what might happen if she should die; I did wonder about it, in the same way I wondered what might happen if our house were swallowed up in an earthquake. There could hardly be life after such an event.”

“My eyes were stinging, my body shaking, and my heart seemed to be just aching deep in my chest. (...)I should have let myself smash down the rocks. It would have hurt a whole lot less”