It is hard to look at the tumor and not come away with the feeling that one has encountered a powerful monster in its infancy
Siddhartha MukherjeeRead
The trick to my writing, it turned out, was doing so exclusively in bed. The minute I even dared to discipline myself and write at the desk, I produced mounds of nonsense. Yet, sitting in bed, I wrote easily, effortlessly, fluidly. I became the master of perfect indiscipline.
Interpretation
Find your unique creative process for writing, even if it goes against conventional discipline.
In this quote, Siddhartha Mukherjee reflects on the importance of understanding and embracing one's own creative process. By acknowledging that writing in bed leads to his best work, he highlights how personal comfort and freedom can foster creativity, countering the notion that discipline must always entail rigid structure and setting.
In practice
In a writing workshop to discuss unconventional methods of creativity.
It is hard to look at the tumor and not come away with the feeling that one has encountered a powerful monster in its infancy
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.
One day, I had a patient who was going through chemotherapy who came to me and said, 'I'm going to go on with what I'm doing, but I need you to tell me what it is that I'm fighting.'
Nearly every one of the genes that turns out to be a key player in cancer has a vital role in the normal physiology of an organism. The genes that enable our brains and blood cells to develop are implicated in cancer.
It remains an astonishing, disturbing fact that in America - a nation where nearly every new drug is subjected to rigorous scrutiny as a potential carcinogen, and even the bare hint of a substance's link to cancer ignites a firestorm of public hysteria and media anxiety - one of the most potent and common carcinogens known to humans can be freely bought and sold at every corner store for a few dollars.
It felt—nearly twenty-five hundred years after Hippocrates had naively coined the overarching term karkinos—that modern oncology was hardly any more sophisticated in its taxonomy of cancer.
If you do not have an absolutely clear vision of something, where you can follow the light to the end of the tunnel, then it doesn't matter whether you're bold or cowardly, or whether you're stupid or intelligent. Doesn't get you anywhere.
I was warmed by the sun, rocked by the winds and sheltered by the trees as other Indian babes. I was living peaceably when people began to speak bad of me. Now I can eat well, sleep well and be glad. I can go everywhere with a good feeling.
The difference between Talent and Genius is that Talent says things which he has never heard but once, and Genius things which he has never heard.
You see, you closed your eyes. That was the difference. Sometimes you cannot believe what you see, you have to believe what you feel. And if you are ever going to have other people trust you, you must feel that you can trust them, too--even when you’re in the dark. Even when you’re falling.
The fool’s life is empty of gratitude and full of fears; its course lies wholly toward the future.
How much good inside a day? Depends how good you live 'em.
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