I Began Wondering, Can One Really Write

I Think When We Use 'stress', We Are Often Using A Kind Of Dummy Word To Try To Fit Many Different Things Into One Big Category.

I Wanted To Explore Cancer Not Just Biologically, But Metaphorically. The Idea That Tuberculosis In The 19th Century Possessed The Same Kind Of Frightening And Decaying Quality Was Very Interesting To Me, And It Seemed That One Could Explore The Idea That Every Age Defined Its Own Illness.

I Think The Cardinal Rule Of Learning To Write Is Learning To Read First. I Learned To Write By Learning To Read.

In 2005, A Man Diagnosed With Multiple Myeloma Asked Me If He Would Be Alive To Watch His Daughter Graduate From High School In A Few Months. In 2009, Bound To A Wheelchair, He Watched His Daughter Graduate From College. The Wheelchair Had Nothing To Do With His Cancer. The Man Had Fallen Down While Coaching His Youngest Son's Baseball Team.

Cancer's Life Is A Recapitulation Of The Body's Life, Its Existence A Pathological Mirror Of Our Own. Susan Sontag Warned Against Overburdening An Illness With Metaphors. But This Is Not A Metaphor. Down To Their Innate Molecular Core, Cancer Cells Are Hyperactive, Survival-endowed, Scrappy, Fecund, Inventive Copies Of Ourselves.