"Whenever you read a cancer booklet or website or whatever, they always list depression among the side effects of cancer. But, in fact, depression is not a side effect of cancer. Depression is a side effect of dying."
"You realize that trying to keep your distance from me will not lessen my affection for you. All efforts to save me from you will fail."
"Some people don't understand the promises they're making when they make them,"I said."Right, of course. But you keep the promise anyway. That's what love is. Love is keeping the promise anyway."
"You do not immortalize the lost by writing about them. Language buries, but does not resurrect."
"I told Augustus the broad outline of my miracle: diagnosed with Stage IV thyroid cancer when I was thirteen. (I didn’t tell him that the diagnosis came three months after I got my first period. Like: Congratulations! You’re a woman. Now die.)"
"Witness also that when we talk about literature, we do so in the present tense. When we speak of the dead, we are not so kind."