Women agonize… over cancer; we take as a personal threat the lump in every friend’s breast. – Martha Weinman Lear, Heartsounds

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