Siddhartha Mukherjee quotes

I left Delhi in 1989 and remember very little of how life used to be then. Increasingly, in my recent visits to Delhi, I've started to realize that the city has become intellectually very lively. It makes me want to discover the city over and over again. (Siddhartha Mukherjee)
Good physicians are rarely dispassionate. They agonize and self-doubt over patients. View quote
Siddhartha Mukherjee
Most discoveries even today are a combination of serendipity and of searching. View quote
Siddhartha Mukherjee
Pharmacology is benefited by the prepared mind. You need to know what you are looking for. View quote
Siddhartha Mukherjee
I think the way we think about cancer, the way we treat cancer, has dramatically changed in the last century. There is an enormous amount of options that a physician can provide today, right down from curing patients, treating patients or providing patients with psychic solace or pain relief. View quote
Siddhartha Mukherjee
Writing anything as an expert is really poisonous to the writing process, because you lose the quality of discovery. View quote
Siddhartha Mukherjee
Probably the most important reason we are seeing more cancers than before is because the population is ageing overall. And cancer is an age-related disease. View quote
Siddhartha Mukherjee
A breast cancer might turn out to have a close resemblance to a gastric cancer. And this kind of reorganization of cancer in terms of its internal genetic anatomy has really changed the way we treat and approach cancer in general. View quote
Siddhartha Mukherjee
There is a very moving and ancient connection between cancer and depression. View quote
Siddhartha Mukherjee
If there's a seminal discovery in oncology in the last 20 years, it's that idea that cancer genes are often mutated versions of normal genes. View quote
Siddhartha Mukherjee
I think the cardinal rule of learning to write is learning to read first. I learned to write by learning to read. (Siddhartha Mukherjee)
I began wondering, can one really write a biography of an illness? But I found myself thinking of cancer as this character that has lived for 4,000 years, and I wanted to know what was its birth, what is its mind, its personality, its psyche? View quote
Siddhartha Mukherjee
I had seen cancer at a more cellular level as a researcher. The first time I entered the cancer ward, my first instinct was to withdraw from what was going on - the complexity, the death. It was a very bleak time. View quote
Siddhartha Mukherjee
I wanted to explore cancer not just biologically, but metaphorically. The idea that tuberculosis in the 19th century possessed the same kind of frightening and decaying quality was very interesting to me, and it seemed that one could explore the idea that every age defined its own illness. View quote
Siddhartha Mukherjee
I think when we use 'stress', we are often using a kind of dummy word to try to fit many different things into one big category. View quote
Siddhartha Mukherjee
I believe the biggest breakthroughs on cancer could come from brilliant researchers based in India. View quote
Siddhartha Mukherjee
Some cancers are curable, while others are highly incurable. The spectrum is enormous. Metastatic pancreatic cancer is a highly incurable disease, whereas some leukemia forms are very curable. There is a big difference between one form and another. View quote
Siddhartha Mukherjee
History repeats, but science reverberates. View quote
Siddhartha Mukherjee
There is a duality in recognising what an incredible disease it is - in terms of its origin, that it emerges out of a normal cell. It's a reminder of what a wonderful thing a normal cell is. In a very cold, scientific sense, I think a cancer cell is a kind of biological marvel. View quote
Siddhartha Mukherjee
When you immerse yourself in medicine you realise that hope is not absolute. It's not that simple. View quote
Siddhartha Mukherjee
The trick to my writing, it turned out, was doing so exclusively in bed. The minute I even dared to discipline myself and write at the desk, I produced mounds of nonsense. Yet, sitting in bed, I wrote easily, effortlessly, fluidly. I became the master of perfect indiscipline. (Siddhartha Mukherjee)
We don't know why, but pancreatic cancer has a very interesting physiological link to depression. There seems to be a deep link, and we don't know what it is. View quote
Siddhartha Mukherjee
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. View quote
Siddhartha Mukherjee
Cell culture is a little like gardening. You sit and you look at cells, and then you see something and say, 'You know, that doesn't look right'. View quote
Siddhartha Mukherjee
It turns out that the very genes that turn on in cancer cells perform vital functions in normal cells. In other words, the very genes that allow our embryos to grow or our brains to grow, our bodies to grow, if you mutate them, if you distort them, then you unleash cancer. View quote
Siddhartha Mukherjee