Sue Thornquist

“The lesson seems almost Zen: you live longer only when you stop trying to live longer.”
― Atul Gawande, Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End

“Life is choices, and they are relentless. No sooner have you made one choice than another is upon you.”
― Atul Gawande, Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End

“We’ve been wrong about what our job is in medicine. We think our job is to ensure health and survival. But really it is larger than that. It is to enable well-being.”
― Atul Gawande, Being Mortal: Illness, Medicine and What Matters in the End

“In the end, people don't view their life as merely the average of all its moments—which, after all, is mostly nothing much plus some sleep. For human beings, life is meaningful because it is a story. A story has a sense of a whole, and its arc is determined by the significant moments, the ones where something happens. Measurements of people's minute-by-minute levels of pleasure and pain miss this fundamental aspect of human existence. A seemingly happy life maybe empty. A seemingly difficult life may be devoted to a great cause. We have purposes larger than ourselves.”
― Atul Gawande, Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End