Cancer Survivors Quotes

Do not be blind in love and try not to suffer in silence. -Alba Castillo ~ Alba Castillo

Heaven is freakin' not ready for me! - seven-time cancer survivor Dionne Warner in Never Leave Your Wingman ~ Deana J. Driver

I'm not sure I'd classify any topics as off-limits, but I don't look for new territories to offend. There's my joke about when my roommate beat cancer. People talk about cancer survivors like they're warriors, but from where I was sitting, she was just watching television and eating soup. Like, did she go to war? No. She kind of just sat around. ~ Amy Schumer

I'm never going to give in. I'm never going to give up, and I will fight back with every breath I have.
- Dionne Warner, seven-time cancer survivor and subject of Never Leave Your Wingman ~ Deana J. Driver

The universe is your attendant. It will bestow you with the silverest of its sunshine, coolest of moonlight and the most fragrant air. Each drop of water that goes into your thirsty body will turn into God's nectar that will nourish the cells of your body and make sure that you shine once again! ~ Sanchita Pandey

Both of our daughters, Debbie and Bonnie, are also cancer survivors. ~ David Wilkerson

It is not a crime to commit First Degree Writing ~ Temple Emmet Williams

Initially, after David's diagnosis, I would cringe when I read
books or articles by cancer survivors who stated that cancer had
been a gift in their lives. How could all that David endured be
viewed as a gift? The invasive surgery, the weeks of chemotherapy
and radiation: a gift?
Yet, after the cancer, David would often reach for my hand and
say, "If it is cancer that is responsible for our new relationship, then
it was all worth it." And I'd reluctantly agree that cancer had been a
gift in our lives. We'd both seen the other alternative: patients and
survivors who had become bitter and angry, and neither one of us
wanted to become that. ~ Mary Potter Kenyon

Like most cancer survivors, lived with uncertainty. ~ John Green

And I'll tell you, honestly, folks that I talk to, the 2.5 million breast cancer survivors in America, that I am one of, understand that we're done with insurance companies dropping us or denying us coverage because of - because we have a preexisting condition. ~ Debbie Wasserman Schultz

Admit it, "Lord I'm Not Done Yet"
Live it, "Lord I'm Not Done Yet"
Shout it, "Lord I'm Not Done Yet ~ Phyllis Lomax Singh

How many paths had I avoided in life? How many times had I been content to stop at "close enough"
too afraid to push ahead? Too afraid to let go?
Too afraid to give up ... control. ~ Nicole Deese

We accept the cures, with the promise of future struggles, in defiance of death. ~ Benjamin Rubenstein

Two weeks ago, Aaron and Isaac, I learned your mother Laura has breast cancer. My heart feels impaled. These words, so useless and feeble. Laura is only thirty-five years old. Her next birthday will be in only three days. I write this letter to you, my sons, with the hope that one day in the future you will read it and understand what happened to our family.

Together, your mother and I have created and nurtured an unbreakable bond that has transformed us into an unlikely team. A Chicano from El Paso, Texas. A Jew from Concord, Massachusetts. I want you to know your mother. She has given me hope when I have felt none; she has offered me kindness when I have been consumed by bitterness. I believe I have taught her how to be tough and savvy and how to achieve what you want around obstacles and naysayers.

Our hope is that the therapies we are discussing with her doctors will defeat her cancer. But a great and ominous void has suddenly engulfed us at the beginning of our life as a family. This void suffocates me. ~ Sergio Troncoso

It's one thing knowing you have people cheering you on, yet another to know they've walked in your footsteps. ~ Christine Magnus Moore

Even if you are sick or unhappy today, look for the beautiful things life has to offer: the fact that you are living, breathing and capable of loving others is reason enough to celebrate. Life is beautiful anyway. ~ Sanchita Pandey

Happiness is your inherent nature. In the hustle and bustle of life, you have forgotten a part of yourself, and looking for it outside. Fill this void with happiness that is sustainable, not transitory; that illuminates your life and that of others, that is life giving and so natural. ~ Sanchita Pandey

Switch over to the right channel in your life --- positive attitude, right kind of food, right people and positive conversations. ~ Sanchita Pandey

You're actually each other's wingman. You never leave your partner vulnerable. - Graham Warner, husband of fun-loving seven-time cancer survivor Dionne Warner ~ Deana J. Driver

With organization comes empowerment. ~ Lynda Peterson

It's one thing knowing you people cheering you on, yet another to know they have walked in your footsteps. ~ Christine Magnus Moore

She sucked in a breath. "You're ... "
When she didn't finish the sentence, he turned his head and watched her gaze drop to his mouth, which was only a few inches from hers.
"Handy," she finished softly.
"And you're ... "
She smiled. "Stubborn? Annoying?"
"Set to go," he said. ~ Jill Shalvis

I personally know women who are Breast Cancer survivors and will do all I can to support the cause. Besides, I love boobies! ~ Jane Wiedlin

Awful things happen to an awful lot of us & it's a happy moment when you start noticing some kind of payoff. Cancer survivors for ex, notice that they're breathing in a way other people don't. And because they are breathing they are grateful in a way a lot of people aren't. And grateful is a good place to wind up in life. It beats poor me. ~ Betty Rollins

Weed out worry, guilt, hate and fear from your life. Live in the present moment earnestly and wisely, without mourning about the past or anticipating troubles in the future. ~ Sanchita Pandey

Having cancer, fighting cancer, and beating cancer have been THE defining events in my life, and though it was the most terrifying, I know that it has changed me for the better, forever. ~ Brett M. Cordes

Seen nothing? Idiot! We have all the work and all the worry: children to feed, wounds to tend. Once the war is over, you men are all heroes. The dead: heroes. The survivors: heroes. The maimed: heroes. That's why you invented war. It's your war. You wanted it, so get on with it – heroes, my ass! ~ Agota Kristf

... of a child dying an agonizing death from diphtheria, of a young mother ravaged by cancer, of tens of thousands of Asians swallowed in an instant by the sea, of millions murdered in death camps and gulags and forced famines ... Our faith is in a God who has come to rescue His creation from the absurdity of sin and the emptiness of death, and so we are permitted to hate these things with a perfect hatred ... As for comfort, when we seek it, I can imagine none greater than the happy knowledge that when I see the death of a child, I do not see the face of God, but the face of his enemy. It is ... a faith that ... has set us free from optimism, and taught us hope instead. ~ David Bentley Hart

The second time I try to kill a man I'm fourteen. Killing a man seems a very grown-up thing to do - like writing in Biro. ~ Damian Barr

My life, like most people's, has been negatively affected by cancer, and the thought of my young children living in an age where this is no longer humanity's No. 1 health fear was simply overpowering. ~ Shane Smith

Here's the other thing I think about. It makes little sense to try to control what happens to your remains when you are no longer around to reap the joys or benefits of that control. People who make elaborate requests concerning disposition of their bodies are probably people who have trouble with the concept of not existing. [...] I imagine it is a symptom of the fear, the dread, of being gone, of the refusal to accept that you no longer control, or even participate in, anything that happens on earth. I spoke about this with funeral director Kevin McCabe, who believes that decisions concerning the disposition of a body should be mad by the survivors, not the dead. "It's non of their business what happens to them whey the die," he said to me. While I wouldn't go that far, I do understand what he was getting at: that the survivors shouldn't have to do something they're uncomfortable with or ethically opposed to. Mourning and moving on are hard enough. Why add to the burden? If someone wants to arrange a balloon launch of the deceased's ashes into inner space, that's fine. But if it is burdensome or troubling for any reason, then perhaps they shouldn't have to. ~ Mary Roach

There's only one way to become an eagle, and that's to be born an eagle. ~ Shirley Corder

it's okay to die but i do not want to die because of cancer ~ Kariem Sallam

I almost wish I had cancer. Then I'd either beat it or die from it. But my disease, even if successfully treated, will never go away. And it might not kill me. But it will hang over me like the blade of a guillotine; more threatening inert than if the blade suddenly slips and mercifully turns out my lights. This is my war to end all wars. ~ William Cope Moyers

Today the data linking violence in the media to violence in society are superior to those linking cancer and tobacco. ~ David Grossman

Studies of cancer patients show that attitudes of mind have very little effect on clinical outcome. We may say we are fighting cancer, but cancer is merely fighting us; we may think we have beaten it, when it has only gone away to regroup. It is all just the universe doing its stuff, and we are the stuff it is being done to. And so, perhaps, with grief. We imagine we have battled against it, been purposeful, overcome sorrow, scrubbed the rust from our soul, when all that has happened is that grief has moved elsewhere, shifted its interest. ~ Julian Barnes

You smoke?"
"Smoke? Do I look like a fucking idiot? ~ Richard K. Morgan

At that point, more than 15,000 women were dying each year from cervical cancer. The Pap smear had the potential to decrease that death rate by 70 percent or more, but there were two things standing in its way: first, many women - like Henrietta - simply didn't get the test; and, second, even when they did, few doctors knew how to interpret the results accurately, because they didn't know what various stages of cervical cancer looked like under a microscope. Some mistook cervical infections for cancer and removed a woman's entire reproductive tract when all she needed was antibiotics. Others mistook malignant changes for infection, sending women home with antibiotics only to have them return later, dying from metastasized cancer. And even when doctors correctly diagnosed precancerous changes, they often didn't know how those changes should be treated. ~ Rebecca Skloot

Be a victor, not a victim. ~ Joel Osteen

One of the worst things you can do if you're worried about breast cancer is to cook beef, pork, fish or poultry at a high temperature - which includes frying, grilling and roasting. ~ Michael Greger

Among the cancers devouring the American body politic, one of the most virulent involves liberals who play the race card as carelessly as children playing 52 Pickup. ~ Deroy Murdock

Patients are becoming aware that they're being taken for a ride by big pharma companies. They charge high prices and have never cared for India's healthcare. There are 23 million cases of cancer every year and India has a fair share of that. ~ Yusuf Hamied

Any thought which brings with it fear, worry, anxiety etc. should be immediately banished from the mind by replacing such thoughts with self-assuring, positive and energizing thoughts. This is called 'Quantum Mind' and it can work miracles in your life. ~ Sanchita Pandey

People die of love. I'm one of the few who'll admit it. That doesn't mean it isn't true.
Take all the people who died yesterday, or last week, or last year. Subtract all the suicides and the so-called accidents of the brokenhearted. Take away the men who got blown away for being in the wrong bed at the wrong moment, the women in abusive marriages who died of cancer because they couldn't find any other exit from their lives. All the AIDS deaths except from the needles and the transfusions, the ones they call the innocent victims. Like if you have sex, you're guilty. Deserved just what you got.
Now tell me who all you've got left.
Without love the world would be overpopulated, except that without love it wouldn't be populated at all. Love giveth and love taketh away and all that crap. You'll probably say all those people died from the lack of love, but I say it's two sides of the same coin. So it's the same coin. ~ Catherine Ryan Hyde

Depression can seem worse than terminal cancer, because most cancer patients feel loved and they have hope and self-esteem. ~ David D. Burns

We can ill afford to wait until we have worked through all our memories & feelings about incest before learning to rest & play. While it may seem to be a natural impulse to get to the bottom of things & purge ourselves fully, we need to regularly examine the full picture of our lives for balance along the way…Learning to rest & play is an essential part of our healing. ~ Maureen Brady

A new report says that dogs can sniff out prostate cancer with almost 98 percent accuracy. The report also finds that cats can sniff it out with 100 percent accuracy but they prefer to watch you die. ~ Conan O'Brien

It's hard to raise awareness of pancreatic cancer - people who get it don't live long enough. ~ Randy Pausch

"Fine! Fine! I'm listening ... but it's not very interesting! ...
"Oh, that's what you think! that's what you think! but nothing is very interesting, dear Professor Y! jot this down! take some notes!"
"What notes?"
"Just write! ... that if it weren't for wars, alcohol, blood pressure and cancer, the people in our atheistic Europe would soon be bored to death of life! ~ Louis Ferdinand Celine

The core issue in traumatization is that survivors have been unable to realize fully what has happened to them and how it affects their lives and who they are. In other words, the inability to realize involves many ways of not knowing massive psychic trauma ~ Onno Van Der Hart

Coke and Pepsi, with the acquiescence of the FDA, are needlessly exposing millions of Americans to a chemical that causes cancer, ~ Michael F. Jacobson

I also think of those daily slaughters along the highways, of that death that is as horrible as it is banal and that bears no resemblance to cancer or AIDS because, as the work not of nature but of man, it is an almost voluntary death. How can it be that such a death fails to dumbfound us, to turn our lives upside down, to incite us to vast reforms? No, it does not dumbfound us, because like Pasenow, we have a poor sense of the real, and in the sur-real sphere of symbols, this death in the guise of a handsome car actually represents life; this smiling death is con-fused with modernity, freedom, adventure, just as Elisabeth was con-fused with the Virgin. This death of a man condemned to capital punishment, though infinitely rarer, much more readily draws our attention, rouses passions: confounded with the image of the executioner, it has a symbolic voltage that is far stronger, far darker and more repellent. Et cetera.

Man is a child wandering lost - to cite Baudelaire`s poem again - in the "forests of symbols."

(The criterion of maturity: the ability to resist symbols. But mankind grows younger all the time.) ~ Milan Kundera

When we dwell on the enormity of the Second World War and its victims, we try to absorb all those statistics of national and ethnic tragedy. But, as a result, there is a tendency to overlook the way the war changed even the survivors' lives in ways impossible to predict. ~ Antony Beevor

I'm an honorary ambassador for Stand Up to Cancer, and I'm also associated with St. Jude's. ~ Sofia Vassilieva

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. ~ Siddhartha Mukherjee

American children are the heaviest worldwide, and they are getting heavier at a faster rate than other children around the globe. This spread of obesity foreshadows an explosion in degenerative diseases, such as diabetes, heart disease, and cancer waiting to erupt in our children's future. Together we can stop this tragedy from ever happening. ~ Joel Fuhrman

We both start laughing - at the absurdity of our shared experience, the relief of recognition. We cling to each other like survivors of a shipwreck, astonished that neither of us drowned. ~ Christina Baker Kline

All science is a two-edged sword. It is pure only in the mind, at conception, as an idea, an equation, or just some new way of looking at things. But once it's out there in the world, it becomes whatever the world wants it to be. Germ warfare, nuclear holocaust, or a cure for cancer. ~ David Ambrose

Cancer stops you in your tracks. It really makes you think about what's important. In a second, life can change. Don't ever forget to say thank you for love and family. What good is your success without them? ~ Jaclyn Smith

And this was to save rats, right? Or mice? You spent all this money to save mice the problem of developing tumors? ~ Siddhartha Mukherjee

Crown Of Love

They say it fades if you let it, love was made to forget it. i carved
your name across my eyelids, you pray for rain i pray for blindness.
if you still want me, please forgive me, the crown of love is not upon me.
if you still want me, please forgive me, because the spark is not within me.
i snuffed it out before my mom walked in my bedroom.
the only thing that you keep changin' is your name. my love keeps
growin' still the same, just like cancer, and you won't give me a
straight answer!
if you still want me, please forgive me, the crown of love has fallen from me.
if you still want me, please forgive me, because your hands are not upon me.
i shrugged them off before my mom walked in my bedroom.
the pains of love, and they keep growin', in my heart there's flowers
growin' on the grave of our old love, since you gave me a straight
answer.
if you still want me, please forgive me, the crown of love is not upon me.
if you still want me, please forgive me, because the spark is not within me.
it's not within me.
it's not within me.
you gotta be the one. you gotta be the way. your name is the only
word, the only word that i can say! ~ Arcade Fire

When I began writing, I did not realize that the Holocaust would become a critical part of the story. During and after WWII, neither the survivors of the Holocaust nor the combat solders were diagnosed or treated for what is now known as PTSD (Post-traumatic Stress Disorder). Many of the characters in this book were victims of this now well-known disorder. ~ Helene Uhlfelder

Not smoking gains in the area of lung cancer, but it loses badly in the realm of dramatic gestures. ~ Robert B. Parker

I've never understood white people who can't admit they're white. I mean, white isn't just a color. And maybe that's the problem for them. White is a passport. It's a ticket. The world is a white amusement park and your white skin buys you into it. A woman in economy argued with me about this once. She said, "I've heard this idea and it makes me uncomfortable."

"It probably should," I said.

Dad and I have been broke since he got cancer and sometimes he can't put the heat on over sixty-two or put food in the fridge, but we were always white and he always made sure I knew that. Which sounds stupid because how can a person not know they're white, right?

You don't have to be racist to not know you're white.

But sometimes you do. And Marla has no idea she's white or that the whole world was made for people like her. ~ A.S. King

Love isn't a smiling bride who holds a colorful bouquet and gazes lovingly at her husband; it's a corpse-littered battlefield where the walking wounded have to keep searching for survivors or die themselves. ~ Gary A. Braunbeck

Today we fight. Tomorrow we fight. The day after, we fight. And if this disease plans on whipping us, it better bring a lunch, 'cause it's gonna have a long day doing it. ~ Jim Beaver

Seventy-six for an American male was a number on an actuarial chart that includes men who are obese, smokers and inheritors of deadly family genes. ~ Tom Brokaw

My bleep goes off - it's the morning SHO asking for handover. I've spent two hours in this room, the longest I've ever spent with a patient who wasn't under anaesthetic. On the way home I phone my mum to tell her I love her. ~ Adam Kay

If I had terminal cancer, I had a few weeks to live, I was in tremendous amount of pain - if they just effectively wanted to turn off the switch and legalise that by legalising euthanasia, I'd want that. ~ John Key