Quotes & Sayings About Cancer Illness

When you have a diagnosis of cancer, or any serious illness, your choices are basically to be passive and kind of accept whatever is offered you, or to be active and to learn about your disease, and understand your options, and be an active partner with your doctor. That's the course I took with all three of my cancers. — Hamilton Jordan

When you have a life-threatening illness like cancer, and you're faced with the alternative, it gives doing whatever it is you do a much sweeter taste. — Ronnie Montrose

Cancer, like any other illness, is a bore. — Alan Bennett

Once you are diagnosed with cancer, time changes. It both speeds up insanely and stops altogether. — Eve Ensler

Dying from an aggressive fatal brain tumor is like dying from Alzheimer's disease accelerated one hundred times. — Steven Magee

Julia had been angry most of her life. She may have grown up in wealth and privilege but she'd had to fight to be heard and seen. To be validated. To be something other than a piece to be moved around her parents' Monopoly board. Rage had given her a voice against their manipulations and the guts to walk away. But it had also become ingrained.
There were times when she'd contemplated therapy for it. Right now, she was pleased she hadn't.
If anything could kill this cancer it would be the weight of Julia's wrath. — Amy Andrews

Fear is the most socially accepted sin in the Church. Fear is a serial killer, the prime suspect in the death of more people on the planet than all other diseases combined. Fear in every form has been linked to heart disease, cancer, autoimmune disorders, mental illness and many other sicknesses. Fear is the welcome mat to demonic activity in our lives. — Kris Vallotton

Parents think the worst thing that can happen to their five-year-old is cancer. They're wrong; the worst thing that can happen to their five-year-old is mental illness. — Lisa Gardner

Mental illness is a physical illness, not some disease that enters the minds of the weak or characterless. Like cancer can happen to anyone, let's start treating mental illnesses as what they are, devastating diseases. ~ Sherry Hunter — Sherry Hunter

I get Tweets every day from people telling me that 'Hey, I'm going to overcome my injury or my illness. Cancer. Different diseases. I can beat it because Adrian Peterson showed me the determination and the willpower to be able to prosper and get through adversity whenever it comes.' — Adrian Peterson

The buildup of negative auric vibrations initially impairs our ability to perceive psychically. They can eventually cause us to become ill. Most serious illnesses, including many types of cancer, are the result of auric toxicity. — Frederick Lenz

I bet if cancer of the penis was more prevalent there'd be a cure for this fucker. I bet if dicks were being amputated or dropping off left, right and centre there'd have been a cure decades ago. There'd be a whole fucking government dick department dedicated to it. — Amy Andrews

At your next dinner party, try playing the following game. Challenge everyone around the table to produce a single drug that can cure people of an illness, other then antibiotics. If you come up with anything, stop whatever you are doing and call me. — Lynne McTaggart

If we do not allow for a rhythm of rest in our overly busy lives, illness becomes our Sabbath - our pneumonia, our cancer, our heart attack, our accidents create Sabbath for us. — Wayne Muller

I think that we're making a mistake if we don't see that there is a cultural basis to many illnesses, not just psychiatric ones. Breast cancer would be one prevalent example right now, different kind of cultures surrounding it. If you don't understand the cultural meaning of an illness like that you're going to miss the boat even if you're a great scientist. — Jonathan Michel Metzl

The most important thing in illness is never to lose heart. — Vladimir Lenin

He shook his head at her question. Did women really think men cared about that stuff? Did he care if she did this all the time? Definitely, definitely not. He could honestly say he did not give a flying fuck whether this girl dragged guys home every other day to have her way with them for seven hours. He was just glad as hell she'd decided to do it with him. Today. And hopefully maybe again. Sometime. — Ros Baxter

She frowned, and the effect was so pretty he wondered if he was going mad. Why did he find this cranky, kooky woman so damned appealing? He knew for a fact he could go out tonight and drag home some hot, willing chick who would stroke his ego and never argue with him about anything. He closed his eyes and remembered just how good that felt. Willing women; god bless them. — Ros Baxter

The point is that if you think you can pinpoint the cause, then you can fool yourself into thinking you can avert the cause. It's deeply egotistical. It's life played as a grand insurance policy. Our myth-making around cancer stems from the same impulse. Because we don't know exactly why most of it happens, we weave a makeshift wisdom around it, a false prophet, which seeps into the common story and feeds our hunger to understand why. The guilt is a byproduct, a way to assign blame and seek absolution. It's a lesser evil than the forces of randomness. And it gives us the illusion of control. — Alanna Mitchell

Depression is a treatable medical illness like cancer and heart disease. — Judith Peacock

No death, no suffering. No funeral homes, abortion clinics, or psychiatric wards. No rape, missing children, or drug rehabilitation centers. No bigotry, no muggings or killings. No worry or depression or economic downturns. No wars, no unemployment. No anguish over failure and miscommunication. No con men. No locks. No death. No mourning. No pain. No boredom. No arthritis, no handicaps, no cancer, no taxes, no bills, no computer crashes, no weeds, no bombs, no drunkenness, no traffic jams and accidents, no septic-tank backups. No mental illness. No unwanted e-mails. Close friendships but no cliques, laughter but no put-downs. Intimacy, but no temptation to immorality. No hidden agendas, no backroom deals, no betrayals. Imagine mealtimes full of stories, laughter, and joy, without fear of insensitivity, inappropriate behavior, anger, gossip, lust, jealousy, hurt feelings, or anything that eclipses joy. That will be Heaven. — Randy Alcorn

The predominant cancer metaphor is war. We fight cancer, usually valiantly. We attack tumors and try to annihilate them and bring out our arsenals to do that, and so on. It's us against cancer. This metaphor has come in for its share of criticism within the ethical, psychological and even oncological disciplines. A main concern is that when someone dies of cancer, the message that remains is that that person just hasn't fought hard enough, was not a brave enough soldier against the ultimate foe, did not really want to win.

The cancer-is-war metaphor does not seem to allow space for the idea that in actual war, some soldiers die heroically for the larger good, no matter which side wins. War is death. In the cancer war, if you die, you've lost and cancer has won. The dead are responsible not just for getting cancer, but also for failing to defeat it. — Alanna Mitchell

Paul faced each stage of his illness with grace - not with bravado or a misguided faith that he would "overcome" or "beat" cancer but with an authenticity that allowed him to grieve the loss of the future he had planned and forge a new one. — Paul Kalanithi

Our fears are those that cause cancer and those fears operate in the regions that the drugs we use to hide our fears is the most predominate feeling. Our minds cause our inner illness for the most part. — Steven Machat

I am not afraid to die; I am only afraid of saying goodbye to you forever. — Shannon L. Alder

As an ex-footballer, sometimes surfer and wannabe rock star, Quentin had been fucked by cheerleaders, surfer girls and groupies, but he had never, ever been fucked like that. — Ros Baxter

Our dogs relieve chronic pain, lift our spirits, sniff out cancer, detect impending heart attacks, seizures and migraines, lower our blood pressure and cholesterol levels, help us recover from devastating illness, and even improve our children's IQ, as well as lowering their risk for adult allergies and asthma. Just think - the unconditional love, limitless affection and to-die-for loyalty of a well-chosen, well-trained, well-cared-for dog could be just what the doctor ordered! — Jack Canfield

Poppy Devine did not deserve cancer. Poppy was sweet and industrious and careful and measured and always, always did the right thing. If anyone deserved cancer it was Julia. Julia was loud and opinionated and disagreeable. Rude, some might even say. She went out with bad men, took unnecessary risks, pushed people to their limits, swore like a sailor and flipped the bird more than any female in the history of the world.
It should be her number coming up in the cancer lottery. — Amy Andrews

Life in itself is a big classroom - so learn all the chapters of life well. This chapter of illness is but only one chapter. Learn whatever it has come to teach you and move on in life. — Sanchita Pandey

She'd never met someone so young who was so damn cocky. Most twenty-year-old guys she knew were either gauche or monosyllabic in her presence, but not Spike. There was a directness, a confidence in his inky-blue eyes that a lot of men never mastered.
Cleary Spike was getting laid far too easily. — Amy Andrews

Imagine saying to somebody that you have a life-threatening illness, such as cancer, and being told to pull yourself together or get over it.
Imagine being terribly ill and too afraid to tell anyone lest it destroys your career.
Imagine being admitted to hospital because you are too ill to function and being too ashamed to tell anyone, because it is a psychiatric hospital.
Imagine telling someone that you have recently been discharged and watching them turn away, in embarrassment or disgust or fear.
Comparisons are odious. Stigmatising an illness is more odious still. — Sally Brampton

Quentin Carmody didn't do early mornings, heights or bossy women. — Ros Baxter

I just effectively fight the illness, regardless if it's cancer or religion. — Adam Darski

Psychiatry, as a subspecialty of medicine, aspires to define mental illness as precisely as, let's say, cancer of the pancreas, or streptococcal infection of the lungs. However, given the complexity of mind, brain, and human attachment systems, we have not come even close to achieving that sort of precision. Understanding what is "wrong" with people currently is more a question of the mind-set of the practitioner (and of what insurance companies will pay for) than of verifiable, objective facts. — Bessel A. Van Der Kolk

The LP actress Linda Hunt once wrote, 'Dwarfism, after all, isn't like cancer or heart disease. It isn't fatal, and it isn't even an illness. It is physical, though, and inescapable. You don't get over it. It is you. But you aren't it, and that's an important distinction. — Andrew Solomon

Cancer gets a bad press but, fair do's, it's a truly egalitarian illness, unlike those stuck-up bastards ME and motor neurone. — Ian Pattison

Quentin had told Spike that inking 'percussion' across your
knuckles was kind of lame. It takes more than ten letters to make
a badass knuckle tattoo. That was the problem with drummers.
They didn't listen. But they always seemed to get laid anyway. — Ros Baxter

I think the stigma attached to mental illness will disappear just like it did for cancer years ago. — Sally Graham

If people can talk about having breast cancer, why can't people who have mental illness talk about mental illness? Until we're able to do that, we're not going to be treated with the same kind of respect for our diseases as other people. — Kay Redfield Jamison

Solomon had good days and he had bad days, but the good had far outnumbered the bad since Lisa and Clark had started coming around. Sometimes, though, they'd show up and he's look completely exhausted, drained of all his charm and moving in slow motion. They could do that to him - the attacks. Something about the physical response to panic can drain all the energy out of a person, and it doesn't matter what causes it or how long it lasts. What Solomon had was unforgiving and sneaky and as smart as any other illness. It was like a virus or cancer that would hide just long enough to fool him into thinking it was gone. And because it showed up when it damn well pleased, he'd learned to be honest about it, knowing that embarrassment only made it worse. — John Corey Whaley

When you go through a long illness, certainly one of cancer, there's a certain release from it and relief that it has come to an end, because the suffering can be unbearable, as opposed to an abrupt stop to life when they go out the door and there's a loved one who never comes home because of some accident. — Pierce Brosnan

One of the pitfalls of writing about illness is that it is very easy to imagine people with cancer as either these wise, beyond-their-years creatures or else these sad-eyed, tragic people. And the truth is people living with cancer are very much like people who are not living with cancer. — John Green

My mother had never had a day's illness in her life and never thought to have checks. Then, at 78, she discovered she had breast cancer and passed away the next year. But if she'd had a check two years before, they could have done something about it, they could have saved her. — Rick Wakeman

Scarlett lived by the (thankfully) ancient medical creed: If it tastes awful and smells worse, it's probably good for you.
Julia wasn't so sure about that. She lived by the edict: If it tastes awful and smells worse, leave it the hell alone. On the other hand, if it tasted good and smelled better, you either ate it, squirted it on your neck or fucked it.
It hadn't led her wrong so far. — Amy Andrews

Dear Whoever-that-just-found-out-that-they-have-a-terminal-illness, don't let that put you down. Technically, we are all dying. — Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Sometimes the fog in his eyes would clear, that fog caused by the pain and the killers of pain, and when it cleared, I saw regret and fear in those eyes swimming with tears and I was convinced that this was it, this was the end, this was surely the end. — Tony Parsons

Sometimes, when I talk to someone who has just been diagnosed with cancer or some other illness, I'll remind them: "If you were honest with yourself, you were depressed before this happened. And if this were over you would be happy for a couple of weeks, a couple of months, and then something else would come along." — Marianne Williamson

We were never supposed to live until 40. We were built to self-destruct at 30, whether from cancer or mental illness. We're all going way beyond our expiration date. — Douglas Coupland

Maintaining the thinnest facade of a functioning family that tries to act as others do - plan ahead, drive somewhere, go on holiday, relax - is beyond us. We are smashed. Insecurity jams the gears on every action. Each time we are toppled. I feel a fool over and over again for trying. — Marion Coutts

He kissed her then. Not tentative. Not polite.
This was no first-kiss kiss. It was demanding. Dirty. And it went on and on. Deep, open-mouthed, head-twisting, tongue-fucking, rock'n'roll kissing. — Amy Andrews

I've been to enough other countries in the world to know what happens when you have socialized single-payer health care. It works. People don't get sick as much. They don't lose their life savings with a catastrophic illness like cancer or AIDS. — Jello Biafra

Survival rates for breast cancer are relatively good, but Krishnan has been around illness enough to know there is usually a cruel injustice about the way it strikes. Cranky patients defy the odds, while the kind ones, the ones who bake him cookies or bring him tomatoes from their garden, always seem to die early. Mortality rates utilize the law of averages without consideration for who is most deserving. — Shilpi Somaya Gowda

My silences had not protected me. Your silence will not protect you. But for every real word spoken, for every attempt I had ever made to speak those truths for which I am still seeking, I had made contact with other women while we examined the words to fit a world in which we all believed, bridging our differences. — Audre Lorde

Quentin wasn't stupid, despite living what his father called 'a lifestyle unworthy of yourself'. — Ros Baxter

Quentin flicked a quick glance back at her again. Poppy. This girl had the wrong name. She should have been Rose. Great face, lots of prickles. — Ros Baxter

And while a bald head and a looped ribbon were seen as badges of courage and hope, her reluctant vocabulary and vanishing memories advertised mental instability and impending insanity. Those with cancer could expect to be supported by their community. Alice expected to be an outcast. — Lisa Genova

Let us give publicity to H.I.V./AIDS and not hide it, because the only way to make it appear like a normal illness like TB, like cancer, is always to come out and say somebody has died because of H.I.V./AIDS, and people will stop regarding it as something extraordinary. — Nelson Mandela

I began wondering, can one really write a biography of an illness? But I found myself thinking of cancer as this character that has lived for 4,000 years, and I wanted to know what was its birth, what is its mind, its personality, its psyche? — Siddhartha Mukherjee

Why this girl? Why had this girl crawled right under his skin and made an uncomfortable home there? Why did he want to make things good for her, to see her smile, to make her face
and her voice make all those interesting shapes and noises? Why did he want to stay up late with her when he knew she should be sleeping, just to hear her talk about maths and politics and the
state of the world?
This was not Quentin. Quentin did not like skinny girls. He didn't like serious girls. And he really hated bossy girls.
Quentin loved curvy, fun, uncomplicated girls; girls who laughed at his jokes and took off their bras when they danced on tables. If they wore bras at all. Yet here he was, washing up and mopping and feeling like five kinds of an arsehole over hurting the feelings of some skinny, serious, bossy girl. — Ros Baxter

Oh I bet you're sweet as under all that posh.'
And he looked at her in a way that left her in no doubt that he wasn't talking about the way she might move on the dance floor. If he mentioned honey pots she was going to pour her vodka shot over him. 'You'll never know, — Amy Andrews

Every patient reacts a little differently, both biologically and psychologically. The only constant in cancer is inconstancy; the only certainty is a future of uncertainty, a truism for all of modern life but one made vivid by life-threatening illness. — Jonathan Alter

This is the story of how Dad lived with his lung cancer. But it is much more. Through his illness and the miracles we experienced, I came to see that Dad's was not just a journey. It was a journey home. Home to God. — Joseph M. Hanneman

Clean water is a necessity that we can no longer take for granted. Each year more people die of water related diseases than any other cause of death on this planet. With a higher rate of suffering and mortality than diabetes, cancer, high cholesterol, or war; or any two combined for that matter! An entire economy is growing around water. Those without money are suffering the most and risk severe illness from contaminated sources — Jewel

For the first time, I understood the ancients' need to find explanations for why things happen. It's a quintessential human imperative. Random is not emotionally satisfying. Therefore, lightning was the bolt from an angry god. Crop failure was punishment for failing to honor the gods with a fatted calf. The plague happened because you took the Lord's name in vain or coveted your neighbor's wife. Going to church regularly and praying could forestall illness. And on and on. — Alanna Mitchell

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

People who are in a position of finding out that they're at risk for some illness, whether it's breast cancer, or heart disease, are afraid to get that information - even though it might be useful to them - because of fears that they'll lose their health insurance or their job. — Francis Collins

Cancer is just a word that creates fear. Forget about that word, and let's just focus on balancing your body. All illnesses are just symptoms of imbalance. No illness can remain when your entire system is in balance. — Anita Moorjani

Each of us carries a sleeping tiger inside, and we can't predict when that cat will wake, stretch, and sharpen its claws. — Holly Robinson

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. — John Green

It is not the darkness of shadows: one that follows you, haunts you, terrifies you.
Instead, it consumes you, becomes you, weighs you down.
It IS you.
It is comforting. Familiar.
I have walked with it. Eaten with it. Loved with it. Smiled with it.
Yet I feel it destroying me.
Like cancer.
But I can't remove it. It stays inside of me, taunting me to kill it, myself, but it does not realize that this seduction keeps me alive. — Shannon Mullen

I think that cancer is a life form that exists out there, and it exists in us. I think even the concept of healing is a spiritual principle that we have to really look at. I think the word itself is something we ought to get rid of, because it implies that there is illness - that there is something wrong. — Wayne Dyer

As the ACE study has shown, child abuse and neglect is the single most preventable cause of mental illness, the single most common cause of drug and alcohol abuse, and a significant contributor to leading causes of death such as diabetes, heart disease, cancer, stroke, and suicide. — Bessel A. Van Der Kolk

Cancer gave me an understanding of the point of all this. To survive. Most of our lives it is easy but for the moments when it becomes difficult, when accident or sickness or sadness strikes, it's just about remembering one thing. You must simply survive. — Shaun Hick

I wanted to explore cancer not just biologically, but metaphorically. The idea that tuberculosis in the 19th century possessed the same kind of frightening and decaying quality was very interesting to me, and it seemed that one could explore the idea that every age defined its own illness. — Siddhartha Mukherjee

Dementia is our most-feared illness, more than heart disease or cancer. — David Perlmutter

If you go to the Rijksmuseum, which I really wanted to do- but who are we kidding, neither of us can walk through a museum. But anyway, I looked at the collection online before we left. If you were to go, and hopefully someday you will, you would see a lot of paintings of dead people. You'd see Jesus on the cross, and you'd see a dude getting stabbed in the neck, and you'd see people dying at sea and in battle and a parade of martyrs. But Nor. One. Single. Cancer. Kid. Nobody biting it from the plague or smallpox or yellow fever or whatever, because there's no gory in illness. there is no meaning to it. There is no honour of dying of — John Green

I was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. Suddenly I had to spend all my time getting well. — Gilda Radner

I couldn't stand the waiting anymore. I couldn't stand how alone it made me feel."
And a part of you wished it would just end, said the monster, even if it meant losing her.
And the nightmare began. The nightmare that always ended with -
"I let her go," Conor choked out. "I could have held on but I let her go."
And that, the monster said, is the truth.
"I didn't mean it, though!" Conor said, his voice rising. "I didn't mean to let her go! And now it's for real! Now she's going to die and it's my fault!"
And that, the monster said, is not the truth at all. — Patrick Ness

It's often pretty hard to speak to others about my cancer. I have a number of pet peeves. Many folks are overly solicitous. They can't do enough for you. There's that Kaiser nurse who keeps asking "Isn't there someone who can drive you here?" And some people are too prying. I think they are voyeuristic and attempt to satisfy their morbid curiosity about having cancer. I don't like that and have sometimes wanted to say, "Go get your own damn fatal illness. — Irvin D. Yalom

People get sick and sometimes they get better and sometimes they don't. And it doesn't matter if the sickness is cancer or if it's depression. Sometimes the drugs work and sometimes they don't. Sometimes the drugs work for a while and then they stop. Sometimes the alternative stuff works and sometimes it doesn't. And sometimes you wonder if no outside interference makes any difference at all; if an illness is like a storm, if it simply has to run its course and, at the end of it, depending on how robust you are, you will be alive. Or you will be dead. — Marian Keyes

My goal is to see that mental illness is treated like cancer. — Jane Pauley

But the story of leukemia
the story of cancer
isn't the story of doctors who struggle and survive, moving from institution to another. It is the story of patients who struggle and survive, moving from on embankment of illness to another. Resilience, inventiveness, and survivorship
qualities often ascribed to great physicians
are reflected qualities, emanating first from those who struggle with illness and only then mirrored by those who treat them. If the history of medicine is told through the stories of doctors, it is because their contributions stand in place of the more substantive heroism of their patients. — Siddhartha Mukherjee

My family and friends were definitely the key to my recovery. One thing that I do suggest is that anyone dealing with a life-threatening illness like cancer choose a point person for people to call to find out how you are doing - a sister, brother, mother, father, daughter, son, or close friend. — Olivia Newton-John

Women should know the truth. They can take it; they are adults, not children. If a mother opts for formula rather than breastfeeding, there is good evidence that her baby will score lower on IQ tests and will have a higher risk of many illnesses including some cancers, diabetes, respiratory illnesses, diarrhea and ear infections. She should know that her own risk of breast, ovarian and uterine cancer will be higher, as well as her daughter's risk of breast cancer. The mother increases her own risk of diabetes, high cholesterol, high blood pressure and becoming overweight by "choosing" formula feeding. There is accumulating evidence that the risk of mental illness (alcoholism, ADHD, schizophrenia) is increased by not breastfeeding. A recent study suggested that even behaviour problems in adolescents are more likely if the child was formula fed. The longer the child is breastfed, the lower the risk both for the child and the mother. — Jack Newman

God didn't design your life so you would constantly fall down, but he does hope that you will be brought to your knees. — Shannon L. Alder

At the end of his life, which had included financial ruin in the Great Depression, his wife's barbiturate addiction and death by overdose, and then his own lung cancer, Doc said, "It was enough to have been a unicorn." What he meant was that he got to do art. It was magic to him that his hands and mind got to make wonderful things, that he didn't have to be just another goat or horse. — Mark Vonnegut

It had seemed like a good idea at the time, a sure-fire way to impress this girl, who was as cute as hell but wound tighter than one of his father's antique clocks. — Ros Baxter