Cancer quotes
1.6K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside cancer — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"I will say that there is an inordinate amount of medicine in my novels, especially the first one. There are a lot of medical things that happen. A hip fracture, three different kinds of lung cancer, pneumonia, blood poisoning, and so on."
"It turned out that, like Satan, cancer had many names."
"I don't rock for Cancer. I rock for cash, and the topless dancers."
"I'm just trying to spread the word and upturn the myth that actually you should be resting after cancer treatment. You shouldn't; you should be getting out and doing any kind of exercise you can. You don't have to run a marathon, but you just have to up your activity levels."
"Two days prior to the Herrick operation I repaired a double cleft lip, resected a recurrent cancer of the mouth, corrected lop ears in a child, and closed a burn of the buttocks."
"I don't think you're dying," I said. "I think you've just got a touch of cancer. He smiled. Gallows humor."
"And then we were kissing.....The space around us evaporated, and for a weird moment I rally like my body; this cancer-ruined thing I'd spent years dragging around suddenly seemed worth the struggle."
"Isaac out of surgery. It went well. He's officially NEC. NEC meant "no evidence of cancer." A second text came a few seconds later. I mean, he's blind. So that's unfortunate."
"And then we were kissing. My hand let go of the oxygen cart and I reached up for his neck, and he pulled me up by my waist onto my tiptoes. As his parted lips met mine, I started to feel breathless in a new and fascinating way. The space around us evaporated, and for a weird moment I really liked my body, this cancer-ruined thing I'd spent years dragging around suddenly seemed worth the struggle, worth the chest tubes and PICC lines and the ceaseless bodily betrayal of the tumors."
"One of the pitfalls about writing about illness is that it is very easy to imagine people with cancer as either these wise-beyond-their-years creatures or these sad-eyed tragic people. And the truth is, people living with cancer are very much like people who are not living with cancer. They're every bit as funny and complex and diverse as anyone else."
"He also said that if anyone did anything to mess up the rest of the testing, he was going to call 911 personally. Yeah, like that wouldn't make it into the nightly news again: WHEELCHAIR-BOUND CANCER PATIENT ARRESTED FOR FREE SPEECH."
"Fighting cancer is my mission right now. The research and development of finding cures for this nasty disease is my passion."
"Tobin," Mom said disapprovingly. She wasn't a particularly funny person. It suited her professionally - I mean, you don't want your cancer surgeon to walk into the examination room and be like, "Guy walks into a bar. Bartender says, 'What'll ya have?' And the guy says, 'Whaddya got?' And the bartender says, 'I don't know what I got, but I know what you got: Stage IV melanoma."
"There was quite a lot of competitiveness about it, with everybody wanting to beat not only cancer itself, but also the other people in the room. Like, I realize that this is irrational, but when they tell you that you have, say, a 20 percent chance of living five years, the math kicks in and you figure that’s one in five . . . so you look around and think, as any healthy person would: I gotta outlast four of these bastards."
"There is only one things in this world shittier than biting it from cancer when you're sixteen, and that's having a kid who bites it from cancer."
"How are the eyes?' 'Oh, excellent,' he said. 'I mean, they're not in my head is the only problem.' 'Awesome, yeah,' Gus said. 'Not to one-up you or anything, but my body is made out of cancer.' 'So I heard,' Issac said, trying not to let it get to him. He fumbled toward Gus's hand and found only his thigh. 'I'm taken,' Gus said."
"But of course there is always a hamartia and yours is that oh, my God, even though you HAD FREAKING CANCER you give money to a company in exchange for the chance to acquire YET MORE CANCER."
"Agustus asked if I wanted to go with him to Support Group, but I was really tired from my busy day of Having Cancer, so I passed."
"People talk about the courage of cancer patients, and I do not deny that courage. I had been poked and stabbed and poisoned for years, and still I trod on. But make no mistake: In that moment, I would have been very, very happy to die."
"But in AIA, Anna decides that being a person with cancer who starts a cancer charity is a bit narcissistic, so she starts a charity called The Anna Foundation for People with cancer Who Want to Cure Cholera."
