Nothing is invented; nothing is extraneous. Cancer's life is a recapitulation of the body's life, its existence a pathological mirror of our own [. . .] this is not a metaphor. Down to their innate molecular core, cancer cells are hyperactive, survival-endowed, scrappy, fecund, inventive copies of ourselves.


Siddhartha Mukherjee

  Email Quote to Friends   Link to Quote   Create Short URL  Publish Text About This Quote   Share on Facebook, Twitter, and more
  See Recommended Quotes For You

Related

Life is not a game. Still, in this life, we choose the games we live to play.
J.R. RIM
Life is a re-discovery.
BRIAN BLESSED
If you think that life is a celebration full of party poppers and merry go rounds it's not it's a ga...
GARY F EVANS...
Life Is a Misconception.
DEYTH BANGER
Life is a desire!
DEYTH BANGER
For me, my life is a journey.
JAY ELECTRONICA
Life is a risk.
CARMELO ANTHONY
Be grateful for every moment and every breath.
TERESA COLLINS
Without music, life is a journey through a desert.
PAT CONROY
Life is a journey. When we stop, things don't go right.
POPE FRANCIS
This garden is your life. Of course, there are the occasional weeds—but more than anything, this g...
SETH ADAM SMITH
Life is a school of probability.
WALTER BAGEHOT
This life is a process of learning.
LAURYN HILL
Life is a process. We are a process. The universe is a process.
ANNE WILSON SCHAEF
Everybody in life is a chameleon.
MELANIE CHISHOLM
Life is a grand party.
EZRA MILLER
My life is a struggle.
VOLTAIRE
To trust someone you must firstly remember that it is a two way street that will go all the way if y...
GARY F EVANS...
It is a lie.
ARTHUR MILLER
Empathy is the new measurement of everything. It doesn't matter what religion you have, what God you...
C. JOYBELL C.
Life is a mountain of solvable problems, and I enjoy that.
JAMES DYSON
Life is a lot like skateboarding.
LIL WAYNE
All life is a manifestation of the spirit, the manifestation of love.
MORIHEI UESHIBA
For me, life is a bowl of cherries.
SISSY SPACEK
Life is a right, not collateral or casual.
SUHEIR HAMMAD
The books brought brilliance to my life, and they brought an understanding: Life is a story. Everyth...
RENE DENFELD
Every perfect life is a parable invented by God.
SIMONE WEIL
The truth is you don't know what is going to happen tomorrow. Life is a crazy ride, and nothing ...
EMINEM
His life seemed like a deck of cards, and in the midst of all those two’s and three’s someone ha...
TEKOA MANNING
She was scarcely a year older than I was, dark-haired, slender, with a face that would break your he...
GEORGE R.R. MARTIN
A religious life is a struggle and not a hymn.
MADAME DE STAEL
Life is a journey and it's about growing and changing and coming to terms with who and what you ...
KELLY MCGILLIS
Life is a game and true love is a trophy.
RUFUS WAINWRIGHT
Life is a matter of choosing what is good for you.
NAPZ CHERUB PELLAZO
This is the Modern Man, who cannot save himself but wants to save the world.
He is the Wise who...
CRISTIANE SERRUYA
These are moments of love and ecstasy. Deeply moving moments when we will fly! Fly together in the a...
AVIJEET DAS
All of life is a foreign country.
JACK KEROUAC
To the wise, life is a problem; to the fool, a solution.
MARCUS AURELIUS
Life is a kind of struggle. Life is a sort of fight.
HAILE GEBRSELASSIE
For all life is a dream, and dreams themselves are only dreams.
PEDRO CALDERON DE LA BARCA
Life is a predicament which precedes death.
HENRY JAMES
Maybe that's what life is... a wink of the eye and winking stars.
JACK KEROUAC
Life is a series of waves to be embraced and overcome.
DANNY MEYER
Life is a soccer field, don't you think?
SHAKIRA
What do you want a meaning for? Life is a desire, not a meaning.
CHARLIE CHAPLIN
Life is a matter of courtship and wooing, flirting and chatting.
CAROLYN SEE
Life is a racket. Writing is a racket. Sincerity is a racket. Everything's a racket.
NICK TOSCHES
Life is a mirror and will reflect back to the thinker what he thinks into it.
ERNEST HOLMES
Love isn't the work of the tender and the gentle;
Love is the work of wrestlers.
The one w...
JALALUDDIN MEVLANA RUMI
The opportunity to decieve others is ever present and often tempting, and each instance of deception...
SAM HARRIS
Baseball life is a tough life on the family.
NOLAN RYAN
I'm fucking the grave, I thought, I'm bringing the dead back to life...
CHARLES BUKOWSKI
Mother Superior jump the gun...
-The Beatles, Happiness is a Warm Gun
LAUREN MYRACLE
We all are wearing many hundred glasses of different colors. Therefore, everyone sees the world in d...
MUDITHA CHAMPIKA
I think life is a chain of events.
ZARA LARSSON
Life is a game. Money is how we keep score.
TED TURNER
Life is a marathon, not a sprint. It's about taking a bigger-picture approach.
IVANKA TRUMP
Life is a succession of moments, to live each one is to succeed.
CORITA KENT
Life is a wretched gray Saturday, but it has to be lived through.
ANTHONY BURGESS
Life is a lot easier when you realize that you're not in control of it all.
KARRINE STEFFANS
For me life is a challenge. And it will be a challenge if I live to be 100 or if I get to be a trill...
BEAH RICHARDS
Life is a gift, given in trust - like a child.
ANNE MORROW LINDBERGH
'The Lunchbox' has been a blessing - all gift-wrapped and tied with a bow. Life is a lunchbo...
NIMRAT KAUR
What I've learned is that life is a balance between idealism and realism.
PETER HOOK
Life is a solitary cell whose walls are mirrors.
EUGENE O'NEILL
I wanted to tell you that I just--I miss you. And maybe that sounds ridiculous--like we barely know ...
TAMMARA WEBBER
I blame my dad for my sweet tooth. His motto was 'Life is short; eat dessert first.' How can I argue...
WENDY MASS
My life is a series of things that just happen.
HAROLD RUSSELL
Anything which interferes with my social life is a no-no.
CILLA BLACK
My life is a mosaic, and there's no room in between pieces at all.
MARCIA CLARK
Why is it that good times aren't permitted to last? Especially when we have put in so much time and ...
LESLIE W.P. GARLAND
Life may change, but it may fly not; Hope may vanish, but can die not; Truth be veiled, but still it...
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
Life is a tide; float on it. Go down with it and go up with it, but be detached. Then it is not diff...
PREM RAWAT
You know," Daddy said, "it's some that can live their whole life out without asking about it and it'...
FLANNERY O'CONNOR
Writing the story of your own life is a bit like drilling your own teeth.
GLORIA SWANSON
Life is a travelling to the edge of knowledge, then a leap taken.
D. H. LAWRENCE
Life is a great big canvas; throw all the paint you can at it.
DANNY KAYE
Life is a blur when one is essaying different roles; it is so fulfilling.
AMITABH BACHCHAN
Life is a matter of really tough choices.
JOE BIDEN
Life is a quarry, out of which we are to mold and chisel and complete a character.
SAMUEL BUTLER
Life is a series of chapters, and one leads to another to another to another, and God knows what it ...
BOB BECKEL
Life is a gamble, at terrible odds - if it was a bet you wouldn't take it.
TOM STOPPARD
Life is a lot like jazz... it's best when you improvise.
GEORGE GERSHWIN
Life is a mystery. Life is uncertain. It makes one feel a bit wobbly to realize that.
REBECCA PIDGEON
Why we think we have not seen any miracle when the existence of our own life is nothing less than a ...
NEHA KOTHARI
For those of us who consider ourselves political moderates, life is a dispiriting slog, a sorry mix ...
JOE KLEIN
It is the simple things that are in the ocean. People think that simple things are on the seashore, ...
C. JOYBELL C.
35. God is entitled to a portion of our income—not because He needs it but because we need to give...
JAMES C. DOBSON
My life is a lovely story, happy and full of incident.
HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN
Just imagine, among 8.7 million species, only one has become smart enough to ponder over the meaning...
ABHIJIT NASKAR
Life is a piece of art drawn by love on the canvas of hope with the colors of desires, wants, and ne...
DEBASISH MRIDHA
Life is what it is supposed to be, its just not always what you want it to be...
DANIEL GILMAN
There are types of people who want to have leverage over other people's lives. For no other reason t...
C. JOYBELL C.
I wish I was home", She said miserably.
She tried so hard to be brave,
to be fierce as a...
GEORGE R.R. MARTIN
Don't be more serious than God. God invented dog farts. God designed your body's plumbing system. Go...
PETER KREEFT
As a movement (rather than a preference), the goal of antinatalism is that no humans should have chi...
QUENTIN S. CRISP
I begin by imagining
The impossible
And end by accomplishing
The impossible.
SRI CHINMOY
The cliche is that life is a mountain. You go up, reach the top and then go down.
JEANNE MOREAU
Our life is a series of moments. Let them all go. Moments. All gathering towards this one.
NOW IS GOOD
I believe that life is a journey towards God, and that no one has the right to insist that you go a ...
PAT BUCKLEY

More Siddhartha Mukherjee

If you take 100 breast-cancer samples, 100 types of cancer have 100 different hallmarks of mutated g...
SIDDHARTHA MUKHERJEE
Probably the most important reason we are seeing more cancers than before is because the population ...
SIDDHARTHA MUKHERJEE
Some cancers are curable, while others are highly incurable. The spectrum is enormous. Metastatic pa...
SIDDHARTHA MUKHERJEE
I had seen cancer at a more cellular level as a researcher. The first time I entered the cancer ward...
SIDDHARTHA MUKHERJEE
Good physicians are rarely dispassionate. They agonize and self-doubt over patients.
SIDDHARTHA MUKHERJEE
Cell culture is a little like gardening. You sit and you look at cells, and then you see something a...
SIDDHARTHA MUKHERJEE
In a spiritual sense, a positive attitude may help you get through chemotherapy and surgery and radi...
SIDDHARTHA MUKHERJEE
My memory of my household is of one immersed in books and music. I have a very intimate relationship...
SIDDHARTHA MUKHERJEE
We may have to learn to live with cancer rather than die of it. It means a big change in our mindset...
SIDDHARTHA MUKHERJEE
Cancer has enormous diversity and behaves differently: it's highly mutable, the evolutionary pri...
SIDDHARTHA MUKHERJEE
The history is important because science is a discipline deeply immersed in history. In other words,...
SIDDHARTHA MUKHERJEE
A breast cancer might turn out to have a close resemblance to a gastric cancer. And this kind of reo...
SIDDHARTHA MUKHERJEE
There is an enormous amount of options that a physician can provide today, right down from curing pa...
SIDDHARTHA MUKHERJEE
I'm human, we all are - all doctors are - and grieving is a natural part of medicine. As a docto...
SIDDHARTHA MUKHERJEE
I think the way we think about cancer, the way we treat cancer, has dramatically changed in the last...
SIDDHARTHA MUKHERJEE
I wanted to explore cancer not just biologically, but metaphorically. The idea that tuberculosis in ...
SIDDHARTHA MUKHERJEE
It turns out that the very genes that turn on in cancer cells perform vital functions in normal cell...
SIDDHARTHA MUKHERJEE
There is a duality in recognising what an incredible disease it is - in terms of its origin, that it...
SIDDHARTHA MUKHERJEE
I think when we use 'stress', we are often using a kind of dummy word to try to fit many dif...
SIDDHARTHA MUKHERJEE
We now have poured in an enormous amount of resources into cancer. The National Cancer Institute Pro...
SIDDHARTHA MUKHERJEE
Writing anything as an expert is really poisonous to the writing process, because you lose the quali...
SIDDHARTHA MUKHERJEE
When you immerse yourself in medicine you realise that hope is not absolute. It's not that simpl...
SIDDHARTHA MUKHERJEE
Because I work on leukemia, the image of cancer I carry in my mind is that of blood. I imagine that ...
SIDDHARTHA MUKHERJEE
Sidney Farber was a pathologist. He was called a doctor of the dead. He was a pathologist who sort o...
SIDDHARTHA MUKHERJEE
I left Delhi in 1989 and remember very little of how life used to be then. Increasingly, in my recen...
SIDDHARTHA MUKHERJEE
Only one person was conspicuously missing from the (American Society of Clinical Oncology, ASCO) par...
SIDDHARTHA MUKHERJEE
A furious researcher stumbled out of one of the lab buildings and shouted, 'I'm a scientist working ...
SIDDHARTHA MUKHERJEE
I could write a thesis on the physiology of vision. But I had no way to look through the fabric of c...
SIDDHARTHA MUKHERJEE
What does it mean to be an oncologist? It means that you get to sit in at a moment of another person...
SIDDHARTHA MUKHERJEE
The problem with racial discrimination, though, is not the inference of a person's race from their g...
SIDDHARTHA MUKHERJEE
If the history of the last century taught us the dangers of empowering governments to determine gene...
SIDDHARTHA MUKHERJEE
We know cancer is caused ultimately via a link between the environment and genes. There are genes in...
SIDDHARTHA MUKHERJEE
The universe seeks equilibriums; it prefers to disperse energy, disrupt organization, and maximize c...
SIDDHARTHA MUKHERJEE
It remains an astonishing, disturbing fact that in America - a nation where nearly every new drug is...
SIDDHARTHA MUKHERJEE
Why did I write 'The Emperor of All Maladies?' A 56-year-old woman with an abdominal sarcoma...
SIDDHARTHA MUKHERJEE
Pharmacology is benefited by the prepared mind. You need to know what you are looking for.
SIDDHARTHA MUKHERJEE
There's a phrase in Shakespeare: he refers to it as the 'hidden imposthume', and this id...
SIDDHARTHA MUKHERJEE
Postwar U.S. was the world's leader in science and technology. The investment in science researc...
SIDDHARTHA MUKHERJEE
Robert Sandler is a child who died when he was three years old, and he is a child who was the first ...
SIDDHARTHA MUKHERJEE
When a disease insinuates itself so potently into the imagination of an era, it is often because it ...
SIDDHARTHA MUKHERJEE
It is tempting to write the history of technology through products: the wheel; the microscope; the a...
SIDDHARTHA MUKHERJEE
The approach required more persistence than imagination, but it produced remarkable results.
SIDDHARTHA MUKHERJEE
It was Disney World fused with Cancerland.
SIDDHARTHA MUKHERJEE
Number infinity is a sign of ignorance
SIDDHARTHA PATRA
I thought of America as Natalie Wood and Bob Wagner sprawled on the edge of a Hollywood swimming poo...
BHARATI MUKHERJEE
Indian president does not determine policy. Here President is not the policy maker. In the name of t...
PRANAB MUKHERJEE
I had never walked on the street alone when I was growing up in Calcutta, up to age 20. I had never ...
BHARATI MUKHERJEE
In any restaurant, my eyes alight first, as if by an atavistic pull, on the meat dishes on the menu....
NEEL MUKHERJEE
As Indians, we must of course learn from the past; but we must remain focused on the future. In my v...
PRANAB MUKHERJEE
I flew into a small airport surrounded by cornfields and pastures, ready to carry out the two comman...
BHARATI MUKHERJEE
There was no audience for my books. The Indians didn't regard me as an Indian and North American...
BHARATI MUKHERJEE
To write, I think one must sit in one place and be bored. Boredom is a very good state for writers t...
NEEL MUKHERJEE
In the 1980s, we were advised, why don't you follow Reaganomics or Thatcherite economics. We sai...
PRANAB MUKHERJEE
I am comfortable at the height where destiny has put me.
PRANAB MUKHERJEE
In Hindu societies, especially overprotected patriarchal families like mine, daughters are not at al...
BHARATI MUKHERJEE
Propelled by freedom of faith, gender equality and economic justice for all, India will become a mod...
PRANAB MUKHERJEE
Bengalis love to celebrate their language, their culture, their politics, their fierce attachment to...
BHARATI MUKHERJEE
I am an American, not an Asian-American. My rejection of hyphenation has been called race treachery,...
BHARATI MUKHERJEE
As a bookish child in Calcutta, I used to thrill to the adventures of bad girls whose pursuit of hap...
BHARATI MUKHERJEE
Growing up in an old-fashioned Bengali Hindu family and going to a convent school run by stern Irish...
BHARATI MUKHERJEE
Of course, running a coalition government in a country like India is a difficult task. More so when ...
PRANAB MUKHERJEE
In traditional Hindu families like ours, men provided and women were provided for. My father was a p...
BHARATI MUKHERJEE
I have seen vast, perhaps unbelievable, changes during the journey that has brought me from the flic...
PRANAB MUKHERJEE
We must recognise that in a globalised world, we cannot remain insulated from external developments....
PRANAB MUKHERJEE
We are all equal children before our mother; and India asks each one of us, in whatsoever role we pl...
PRANAB MUKHERJEE
The United States exists as a sovereign nation. 'America,' in contrast, exists as a myth of ...
BHARATI MUKHERJEE
Trickle-down theories do not address the legitimate aspirations of the poor. We must lift those at t...
PRANAB MUKHERJEE
I feel empowered to be a different kind of writer. The longer I stay here, the more light filters in...
BHARATI MUKHERJEE
The picture of Mother Teresa that I remember from my childhood is of a short, sari-wearing woman scu...
BHARATI MUKHERJEE
I'm very moved by chaos theory, and that sense of energy. That quantum physics. We don't rea...
BHARATI MUKHERJEE
Our federal Constitution embodies the idea of modern India: it defines not only India but also moder...
PRANAB MUKHERJEE
India is a land of plenty inhibited by poverty; India has an enthralling, uplifting civilization tha...
PRANAB MUKHERJEE
In India, there are real consequences to inattention; drivers who jeopardize pedestrians can be lync...
BHARATI MUKHERJEE
Meat-fetishiser that I was, I used to find willed vegetarianism inexplicable. It was one thing to be...
NEEL MUKHERJEE
Lepers were a common sight all over India and in every part of Calcutta, but extending help beyond d...
BHARATI MUKHERJEE
I come from a political family. My father was a freedom fighter. He was a prominent leader of the lo...
PRANAB MUKHERJEE
All my life’s work will drain away without ever being realized. For a sculptor, working with their...
RADHIKA MUKHERJEE
It could be said of him that while others chased the mirage of happiness, he was happy with being co...
NEEL MUKHERJEE
The freedom fighters in India's long struggle for independence from British rule, or members of ...
NEEL MUKHERJEE
The young people of India will build a strong and powerful nation, a nation that is politically matu...
PRANAB MUKHERJEE
Mother Teresa's detractors have accused her of overemphasizing Calcuttans' destitution and o...
BHARATI MUKHERJEE
I wouldn't call myself a 'literary critic,' just a book reviewer.
NEEL MUKHERJEE
In our generation, the role models were Gandhi and Nehru. We revered them. They were venerated perso...
PRANAB MUKHERJEE
No one is coming here for philanthropy. I'll welcome foreign investment, whatever the industry, as l...
DIPANKAR MUKHERJEE
I smell a scam here.
DIPANKAR MUKHERJEE
The PM may have said it, but the civil aviation minister has not said anything about employee's dema...
DIPANKAR MUKHERJEE
If you are showing the example of a hi-tech Chinese airport then also show stories of their revoluti...
DIPANKAR MUKHERJEE
We want to know what they have done with the report.
DIPANKAR MUKHERJEE
The government will have to provide budgetary provision for the purpose...we demand that the rate of...
DIPANKAR MUKHERJEE
The UPA Government owes an explanation to the entire working class.
DIPANKAR MUKHERJEE
These groups try to give a religious and communal color to everything. They are trying to divert the...
DIPANKAR MUKHERJEE
Teaching was my transition from student life to working life. In those days, our system of education...
PRANAB MUKHERJEE
Nostalgia can be extremely powerful in the right hands: think of the intense longing in the films An...
NEEL MUKHERJEE
If the rise of European colonisation began in 18th century India, then the rallying cry of 'Jai ...
PRANAB MUKHERJEE
I grew up in financially straitened circumstances and meat, which was expensive, was a rare thing at...
NEEL MUKHERJEE
Events fall into a pattern that we can only discern retrospectively. We credit ourselves with far mo...
NEEL MUKHERJEE
India introduced Britain to vegetarianism - see Tristram Stuart's excellent first book on this -...
NEEL MUKHERJEE
Did you know, that one night; one moonless, clear, shining night; with the shadowy silhouettes of tr...
RADHIKA MUKHERJEE
It was like dawn, and then dusk cascading over the Himalayas. First, the gradual brightening over sn...
RADHIKA MUKHERJEE
I never have my CNN off, it's on the whole day. I don't want to be out of range of televisio...
BHARATI MUKHERJEE
I don't feel the depression the people who are always looking back to the '50s, to 'Fath...
BHARATI MUKHERJEE
I truly appreciate the special qualities that America and American national myths offer me.
BHARATI MUKHERJEE
I have tried very hard as a novelist to say, 'Novels are about individuals and especially larger...
BHARATI MUKHERJEE
My mother's rules had to do with feminine deportment, so I never played hard enough to break a t...
BHARATI MUKHERJEE
My first novel, 'The Tiger's Daughter,' embodies the loneliness I felt but could not ack...
BHARATI MUKHERJEE
Through my fiction, I make mainstream readers see the new Americans as complex human beings, not as ...
BHARATI MUKHERJEE
I had a 2-week courtship with a fellow student in the fiction workshop in Iowa and a 5-minute weddin...
BHARATI MUKHERJEE
I have to put down roots where I decide to stay. It wasn't enough for me to be an expatriate Ind...
BHARATI MUKHERJEE
I am a naturalized U.S. citizen, which means that, unlike native-born citizens, I had to prove to th...
BHARATI MUKHERJEE
Pakistan's point of view is when we have agreed to withdraw ... what is the relevance (of this) afte...
PRANAB MUKHERJEE
Let yourself be open and life will be easier. A spoon of salt in a glass of water makes the water un...
BUDDHA SIDDHARTHA GUATAMA SHAKYAMUNI