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" I am a scientist and I am a physician. So I write papers. "

Siddhartha Mukherjee

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" Science is among the most profoundly human of our activities. Far from being subsumed by the dehumanising effects of technology, science, in fact, remains our last stand against it. "

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" Postwar U.S. was the world's leader in science and technology. The investment in science research was staggering. "

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" Robert Sandler is a child who died when he was three years old, and he is a child who was the first child that we know of to be treated with chemotherapy. "

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" 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? "

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" Most days, I go home and I feel rejuvenated. I feel ebullient. "

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" Because I work on leukemia, the image of cancer I carry in my mind is that of blood. I imagine that doctors who work on breast cancer or pancreatic cancer have very different visualizations. "

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" Mary Lasker was an entrepreneur; she was a socialite. She was kind of a legendary networker. She became interested in saying, 'Well, you know, if these diseases don't have political support we'll never conquer them.' And she made, really, cancer her special cause. "

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" I think the cardinal rule of learning to write is learning to read first. I learned to write by learning to read. "

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" The gene that enables birds to learn songs can become cancer-causing. There is no normal physiological process that can't be bastardized by the disease. "

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" I believe the biggest breakthroughs on cancer could come from brilliant researchers based in India. "

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" My memory of my household is of one immersed in books and music. I have a very intimate relationship with Bengali literature, particularly Tagore, and my interest besides reading then was music. "

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" A breast cancer might turn out to have a close resemblance to a gastric cancer. And this kind of reorganization of cancer in terms of its internal genetic anatomy has really changed the way we treat and approach cancer in general. "

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" I think the way we think about cancer, the way we treat cancer, has dramatically changed in the last century. There is an enormous amount of options that a physician can provide today, right down from curing patients, treating patients or providing patients with psychic solace or pain relief. "

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" We now have poured in an enormous amount of resources into cancer. The National Cancer Institute Project, you know, runs about $5 billion a year. That's a large amount of money, but let's not be grandiose about the amount of money we're actually spending on a problem that is attacking us at the most fundamental level of the human species. "

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" 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. "

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" What does it mean to be an oncologist? It means that you get to sit in at a moment of another person's life that is so hyper-acute, and not just because they're medically ill. It's also a moment of hope and expectation and concern. "

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" What we do in the laboratory is we try to design drugs that will not just eradicate cancer cells but will eradicate their homes. "

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" 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. "

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" There is a very moving and ancient connection between cancer and depression. "

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" A strong intuition is much more powerful than a weal test. Normals teach us rules; outliers teach us laws. For every perfect medical experiment, there is a perfect human bias. "

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" When you immerse yourself in medicine you realise that hope is not absolute. It's not that simple. "

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" It turns out that the very genes that turn on in cancer cells perform vital functions in normal cells. In other words, the very genes that allow our embryos to grow or our brains to grow, our bodies to grow, if you mutate them, if you distort them, then you unleash cancer. "

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" If there's a seminal discovery in oncology in the last 20 years, it's that idea that cancer genes are often mutated versions of normal genes. "

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" Why did I write 'The Emperor of All Maladies?' A 56-year-old woman with an abdominal sarcoma, having undergone two remissions and a relapse, asked me to describe what she was battling. By the time I had finished answering her, I realised that I had written 600 pages. "

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" I think you would have to be a nihilist to say that we are not making progress on cancer, just like you'd have to be hubristically optimistic to say that we have conquered cancer. "

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" Pharmacology is benefited by the prepared mind. You need to know what you are looking for. "

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" 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.' "

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" Most discoveries even today are a combination of serendipity and of searching. "

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" There is a duality in recognising what an incredible disease it is - in terms of its origin, that it emerges out of a normal cell. It's a reminder of what a wonderful thing a normal cell is. In a very cold, scientific sense, I think a cancer cell is a kind of biological marvel. "

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" Cell culture is a little like gardening. You sit and you look at cells, and then you see something and say, 'You know, that doesn't look right'. "

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