“Part of me was afraid that if I raised my fist to the sky and demanded an answer now, I would hear a thundering and calloused, 'Because I said so," from God in heaven. And I may not ever want to sp...”

“As I watched them file down the stairs, I didn't cry and I wasn't afraid. But I couldn't tell if it was Jesus or the gin.”

“I just want to tell you if that's what You have planned for me, if I am meant to be an obscure flower in the corner of the expansive garden, I will live there and I will love You and I will bloom j...”

“When I interviewed at Yale, the admissions committee asked me why they should let me into the program. I looked at them unblinking and said, 'Because I'm going to change the world some day. And I'm...”

“As my nostrils filled with the stench of burnt hair and my friends scurried to clean up the mess, I thought, 'If your hair catches on fire while you're making a wish, does that mean it isn't coming...”

“I needed someone to tell me how God could allow someone He loved to suffer so much when I wouldn't do this to someone I hated.”

“There is not a moment in which God does not present Himself under the cover of some pain to be endured, of some consolation to be enjoyed, or of some duty to be performed. All that takes place with...”

“I flopped on the overstuffed kitchen couch and watched him go. I wondered what would happen to all his films and photographs in the upstairs closet - the documentaries on homelessness and drug addi...”

“Wherever you will go, I will let you down, But this lullaby goes on.”

“[Karen Lundegaard] was quite frail, debilitated by metastatic breast cancer, which she had long known she had but for which she had been unable to get adequate treatment because she lacked medical ...”

“As a recent editorial in the Journal of Clinical Oncology put it: "What we must first remember is that the immune system is designed to detect foreign invaders, and avoid out own cells. With few ex...”

“As I watched them file down the stairs, I didn't cry and I wasn't afraid. But I couldn't tell if it was Jesus or the gin.”

“Disobey God and you are forgiven. Disobey Nature and you get disease.”

“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 sid...”

“Cancer. The word meant the same to me as tsunami or piranha. I had never seen them; I wasn't even quite sure what they were, but I knew they were bad and I knew in many cases they were deadly.”