If children have the ability to ignore all odds and percentages, then maybe we can all learn from them. When you think about it, what other choice is there but to hope? We have two options, medically and emotionally: give up, or fight like hell. ~Lance Armstrong
Cancer is a word, not a sentence. ~John Diamond
My cancer scare changed my life. I’m grateful for every new, healthy day I have. It has helped me prioritize my life. ~Olivia Newton-John
Bill Hemmer: “You said cancer changes your life, and oftentimes for the better.”
Joel Siegel: “Yes…. Gilda Radner… said this in her book. What cancer does is, it forces you to focus, to prioritize, and you learn what’s important. I mean, I don’t sweat the small stuff. I used to get angry at cab drivers. It’s not worth it…. And when somebody says you have cancer, you realize it’s all small stuff. And what Gilda said is, if it weren’t for the downside, everyone would want to have it. But there is a downside.”
~American Morning, CNN, 13 June 2003
My veins are filled, once a week with a Neapolitan carpet cleaner distilled from the Adriatic and I am as bald as an egg. However I still get around and am mean to cats. ~John Cheever, letter to Philip Roth, 10 May 1982, published in The Letters of John Cheever, 1989, concerning his cancer and its treatment
During chemo, you’re more tired than you’ve ever been. It’s like a cloud passing over the sun, and suddenly you’re out. You don’t know how you’ll answer the door when your groceries are delivered. But you also find that you’re stronger than you’ve ever been. You’re clear. Your mortality is at optimal distance, not up so close that it obscures everything else, but close enough to give you depth perception. Previously, it has taken you weeks, months, or years to discover the meaning of an experience. Now it’s instantaneous. ~Melissa Bank
We “need” cancer because, by the very fact of its incurability, it makes all other diseases, however virulent, not cancer. ~Gilbert Adair, “Under the Sign of Cancer,” Myths and Memories, 1986
Women agonize… over cancer; we take as a personal threat the lump in every friend’s breast. ~Martha Weinman Lear, Heartsounds
The most important thing in illness is never to lose heart. ~Nikolai Lenin
