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" 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. "
Siddhartha Mukherjee
Stress
Kind
Think
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" Mary Lasker was an entrepreneur; she was a socialite. She was kind of a legendary networker. She became interested in saying, 'Well, you know, if these diseases don't have political support we'll never conquer them.' And she made, really, cancer her special cause. "
Siddhartha Mukherjee
Saying
Political
Conquer
" Pharmacology is benefited by the prepared mind. You need to know what you are looking for. "
Siddhartha Mukherjee
Prepared
Mind
You
" Some cancers are curable, while others are highly incurable. The spectrum is enormous. Metastatic pancreatic cancer is a highly incurable disease, whereas some leukemia forms are very curable. There is a big difference between one form and another. "
Siddhartha Mukherjee
Cancer
Big
Difference
" Science is among the most profoundly human of our activities. Far from being subsumed by the dehumanising effects of technology, science, in fact, remains our last stand against it. "
Siddhartha Mukherjee
Science
Human
Last
" I once set myself a deadline: half a chapter a week, 20 minutes a day. The thought froze me instantly, like literary Botox. I returned to my non-schedule: sleeping, writing 20 minutes, and then back to sleep. Breakfast in bed, with juice congealing on the sill: pages and pages began to pour out again. "
Siddhartha Mukherjee
Sleep
Day
Breakfast
" 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. "
Siddhartha Mukherjee
Kind
Interesting
Age
" Cell culture is a little like gardening. You sit and you look at cells, and then you see something and say, 'You know, that doesn't look right'. "
Siddhartha Mukherjee
Look
Say
You
" I had seen cancer at a more cellular level as a researcher. The first time I entered the cancer ward, my first instinct was to withdraw from what was going on - the complexity, the death. It was a very bleak time. "
Siddhartha Mukherjee
First Time
Death
More
" Robert Sandler is a child who died when he was three years old, and he is a child who was the first child that we know of to be treated with chemotherapy. "
Siddhartha Mukherjee
Old
Three
Child
" If something is good, more is not necessarily better. Not always. "
Siddhartha Mukherjee
More
Better
Always
" I am a scientist and I am a physician. So I write papers. "
Siddhartha Mukherjee
Write
Physician
I Am
" Good physicians are rarely dispassionate. They agonize and self-doubt over patients. "
Siddhartha Mukherjee
Over
Rarely
Self-Doubt
" Each of us knows a few or several young people whose lives have been devastated by cancer. I don't mean to be nihilistic about it, but it is very much an active killer of people now. "
Siddhartha Mukherjee
Now
Young
Cancer
" When you immerse yourself in medicine you realise that hope is not absolute. It's not that simple. "
Siddhartha Mukherjee
Hope
Yourself
You
" Why did I write 'The Emperor of All Maladies?' A 56-year-old woman with an abdominal sarcoma, having undergone two remissions and a relapse, asked me to describe what she was battling. By the time I had finished answering her, I realised that I had written 600 pages. "
Siddhartha Mukherjee
She
Woman
Why
" I think you would have to be a nihilist to say that we are not making progress on cancer, just like you'd have to be hubristically optimistic to say that we have conquered cancer. "
Siddhartha Mukherjee
Like
Say
Progress
" I think the cardinal rule of learning to write is learning to read first. I learned to write by learning to read. "
Siddhartha Mukherjee
Think
Rule
First
" We may have to learn to live with cancer rather than die of it. It means a big change in our mindset and how we do research. We haven't quite reached there yet. "
Siddhartha Mukherjee
Mindset
Die
Change
" There's a phrase in Shakespeare: he refers to it as the 'hidden imposthume', and this idea of a hidden swelling is seminal to cancer. But even in more contemporary writing it's called 'the big C'. "
Siddhartha Mukherjee
Cancer
Hidden
Writing
" It turns out that the very genes that turn on in cancer cells perform vital functions in normal cells. In other words, the very genes that allow our embryos to grow or our brains to grow, our bodies to grow, if you mutate them, if you distort them, then you unleash cancer. "
Siddhartha Mukherjee
You
Cancer
Cells
" My memory of my household is of one immersed in books and music. I have a very intimate relationship with Bengali literature, particularly Tagore, and my interest besides reading then was music. "
Siddhartha Mukherjee
Memory
Relationship
Reading
" Most days, I go home and I feel rejuvenated. I feel ebullient. "
Siddhartha Mukherjee
Most
Days
Feel
" There is an enormous amount of options that a physician can provide today, right down from curing patients, treating patients, or providing patients with psychic solace or pain relief. So, in fact, the gamut of medical intervention is enormous. "
Siddhartha Mukherjee
Physician
Medical
Down
" The idea that cancer genes are sitting inside each and every one of our chromosomes, just waiting to be corrupted or inactivated and thereby unleashing cancer, is, of course, one of the seminal ideas of oncology. "
Siddhartha Mukherjee
Inside
Cancer
Ideas
" Because I work on leukemia, the image of cancer I carry in my mind is that of blood. I imagine that doctors who work on breast cancer or pancreatic cancer have very different visualizations. "
Siddhartha Mukherjee
Blood
Work
Cancer
" What we do in the laboratory is we try to design drugs that will not just eradicate cancer cells but will eradicate their homes. "
Siddhartha Mukherjee
Will
Cancer
Cells
" There is a very moving and ancient connection between cancer and depression. "
Siddhartha Mukherjee
Depression
Moving
Cancer
" If there's a seminal discovery in oncology in the last 20 years, it's that idea that cancer genes are often mutated versions of normal genes. "
Siddhartha Mukherjee
Normal
Discovery
Cancer
" I began wondering, can one really write a biography of an illness? But I found myself thinking of cancer as this character that has lived for 4,000 years, and I wanted to know what was its birth, what is its mind, its personality, its psyche? "
Siddhartha Mukherjee
Personality
Myself
Mind
" I'm human, we all are - all doctors are - and grieving is a natural part of medicine. As a doctor, grieving is a natural part of medicine. If you deny that, again, you'd get into this trap of curing and victory. I think grief is very important. "
Siddhartha Mukherjee
Medicine
Doctor
Victory