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
Health is a large word. It embraces not the body only, but the mind and spirit as well;… and not today’s pain or pleasure alone, but the whole being and outlook of a man. – James H. West
There is reading, and there is reading. Reading as a means to an end, for information, to cultivate oneself; reading as an end in itself, a process, a compulsion. – Sven Birkerts (b.1951), “Notes from a Confession,” The Agni Review, No.22 (1985)
