As a resident, my highest ideal was not saving lives -- everyone dies eventually -- but guiding a patient or family to an understanding of death or illness.

— Paul Kalanithi

As I sat up I turned my head to the side, but immediately straightened it again when I felt a sharp pain shoot through my neck.

— Jennifer Starzec

At the end of the day your ability to connect with your readers comes down to how you make them feel.

— Benjamin J. Carey

A weak but steady throb lay beneath Key's searching fingertips. Win's heartbeat...the pulse that sustained his universe.

— Lisa Kleypas

Be a woman of confidence, not cockiness. Know your boundaries, set no limits. Speak your kindness and turn your back to conformed groups. The only way to be a woman of change in this world, is to walk what you talk and set your own soul free first.

— Nikki Rowe

Because there is no glory in illness. There is no meaning to it. There is no honor in dying of.

— John Green

Before I knew it, I was once again being whisked down the hallways at the new hospital into an even bigger room, one that, unbeknownst to me, would be my home for what would feel like a long, long time.

— Jennifer Starzec

Being HIV positive doesn’t necessarily mean that you are going to die before each and every person who is HIV negative.

— Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Being sick successfully is not included in society’s panoply of worthy goals.

— Kaimana Wolff

But he could not call the doctors at the leprosarium. They would return him to Louisiana. They would treat him and train him and counsel him. Furthermore, they would put him back into life as if his illness were all that mattered, as if wisdom were only skin deep, as if grief and remorse and horror were nothing but illusions, tricks done with mirrors, irrelevant to chrome and porcelain and clean, white, stiff hospital sheets and fluorescent lights.

— Stephen R. Donaldson