We “need” cancer because, by the very fact of its incurability, it makes all other diseases, however virulent, not cancer. – Gilbert Adair, “Under the Sign of Cancer,” Myths and Memories, 1986
My veins are filled, once a week with a Neapolitan carpet cleaner distilled from the Adriatic and I am as bald as an egg. However I still get around and am mean to cats. – John Cheever, letter to Philip Roth, 10 May 1982, published in The Letters of Jo
If it was necessary to tolerate in other people everything that one permits oneself, life would be unbearable. – Georges Courteline, La philosophie de Georges Courteline, 1917
