Maureen

“Two languages cancel each other out, suggests Barthes, beckoning a third. Sometimes our words are few and far between, or simply ghosted. in which case the hand, although limited by the borders of skin and cartilage, can be the third language that animates where the tongue falters.”
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

“When there is no place for the scalpel, words are the surgeon’s only tool.”
― Paul Kalanithi, When Breath Becomes Air

“I had started in this career, in part, to pursue death: to grasp it, uncloak it, and see eye-to-eye, unblinking. Neurosurgery attracted me as much for its intertwining of brain and consciousness as for its intertwining of life and death. I had thought that a life spent in the space between the two would grant me not merely a stage for compassionate action but an elevation of my own being: getting as far away from petty materialism, from self- important trivia, getting right there, to the heart of the matter, to truly life and death decisions and struggles... surely a kind of transcendence would be found there?”
― Paul Kalanithi, When Breath Becomes Air

“Openness to human relationality does not mean revealing grand truths from the apse; it means meeting patients where they are, in the narthex or nave, and bringing them as far as you can.”
― Paul Kalanithi, When Breath Becomes Air