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
It is in moments of illness that we are compelled to recognize that we live not alone but chained to a creature of a different kingdom, whole worlds apart, who has no knowledge of us and by whom it is impossible to make ourselves understood: our body. – Marcel Proust