kortina.nyc / notes
20 Aug 2024 | by kortina

Kalanithi // When Breath Becomes Air

A friend of mine recently read and recommended to me Paul Kalanithi’s, When Breath Becomes Air.

Paul is a neurosurgeon who gets diagnosed with terminal lung cancer as he completes his residency, and the book is a memoir of his experience.

It’s OK, but not amazing.


Notes and quotes…


I like this summarization of the Old and New Testament: justice and mercy.

1654 Yet I returned to the central values of Christianity—sacrifice, redemption, forgiveness—because I found them so compelling. There is a tension in the Bible between justice and mercy, between the Old Testament and the New Testament. And the New Testament says you can never be good enough: goodness is the thing, and you can never live up to it. The main message of Jesus, I believed, is that mercy trumps justice every time.



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