I always thought I would die of cancer because my mom and my dad both died of cancer. My dad died of osteocancer, and my mom died of colon cancer.

When I meet people who say – which they do all of the time – ‚I must just tell you, my great aunt had cancer of the elbow and the doctors gave her 10 seconds to live, but last I heard she was climbing Mount Everest,‘ and so forth, I switch off quite early.

Guilt is cancer. Guilt will confine you, torture you, destroy you as an artist. It’s a black wall. It’s a thief.

My great-grandfather and his two brothers fought at Gettysburg. They were in artillery, and they survived the war, thank goodness. So I revere what they did. I think their motivations were honorable when they undertook the war and participated in it along with other Southerners.

Cancer is still a word that strikes fear into people’s hearts, producing a deep sense of powerlessness. But today it is possible to find out through a blood test whether you are highly susceptible to breast and ovarian cancer, and then take action.

I’ve always regretted that I never was able to talk openly with my parents, especially with my father. I’ve heard and read so many things about my family that I can no longer believe anything; every relative I question has a completely different story from the last.

When I go to the clinic next and sit with a tube in my arm and watch the poison go in, I’m in an attitude of abject passivity. It doesn’t feel like fighting at all; it just feels like submitting.

My – both my sisters died with pancreatic cancer. My brother died with pancreatic cancer. My daddy died of pancreatic cancer. My mother died with breast cancer.

There’s a schizoid streak within the family anyway so I dare say that I’m affected by that. The majority of the people in my family have been in some kind of mental institution, as for my brother he doesn’t want to leave. He likes it very much.

I’m not resigned, but I’m realistic too. The statistics in my case are very poor. Not many people come through esophageal cancer and live to talk about it, or not for long. And the other wager is, the part of the wager, it’s a certainty you’ll have a terrible time and you may wish you were dying because it’s an awful process.

My father had died, and very swiftly, too, of cancer of the esophagus. He was 79. I am 61. In whatever kind of a ‚race‘ life may be, I have very abruptly become a finalist.

My last name is originally Irish. I’m not exactly sure whereabouts it’s from, but I’ve got family branches that were traced back there.

If there is even one woman out there who went and got checked and found that she had cancer or she was positive and she caught something in time, and if in any small way I was a part of that, it makes me very emotional.

I had a PET scan, and it was cleared. Not one cell of cancer after three rounds of chemo. But I still had seven more just for safety, which was stupid. I should have just worked on therapy.

Depression runs in my family on both sides, and I have to be wary.

Some forms of motor neuron disease are genetically linked, but I have no indication that my kind is. No other member of my family has had it. But I would be in favour of abortion if there was a high risk.

I believed in God when cancer come to me. Now when I speak, I speak with authority because I’ve been there.

Bitterness is cancer – it eats upon the host. It doesn’t do anything to the object of its displeasure.

I’ve had two cancer bouts in my years on the Court, and the first one, Justice O’Connor told me, ‚Now, you do the chemotherapy on Friday because you’ll get over it during the weekend and you can be back in court on Monday.‘

Cancer victimhood contains a permanent temptation to be self-centred and even solipsistic.

My grandfather lived to be late 90s on one side and on the other side, 70s or something. And my father died young, at 63. But he didn’t take very good care of himself.

People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors.

It’s not at all good when your cancer is ‚palpable‘ from the outside. Especially when, as at this stage, they didn’t even know where the primary source was. Carcinoma works cunningly from the inside out. Detection and treatment often work more slowly and gropingly, from the outside in.

June Jordan, who died of cancer in 2002, was a brilliant, fierce, radical, and frequently furious poet. We were friends for thirty years. Not once in that time did she step back from what was transpiring politically and morally in the world. She spoke up, and led her students, whom she adored, to do the same.

In 1995, I was diagnosed with cancer, and I had to practice what I preached. I had always said to ‚believe in God‘ and ‚don’t give up‘ to little kids who had been diagnosed with cancer. I then thought if I can’t call on that same God and same strength that I told people about, I would be a liar and a phony.

I’m taking special treatments for the cancer in my brain and in my liver. Part of the liver was removed, and they did the treatment on four places in my brain with radiation. And now I’m taking a long-term medicine that stimulates my own immune system to fight against cancer.

All of us are so mixed. My great-grandfather was white.

Bitterness is like cancer. It eats upon the host. But anger is like fire. It burns it all clean.

There are more people dying of malaria than any specific cancer.

I don’t know if it’s changing already with ‚Joanne,‘ but my intention is to bring people together that don’t know each other and that would maybe feel awkward, but somehow be brought together by the music. That’s what I wanted to do. Because that is pure and authentic to my family history and what I stand for.

It seems that when you have cancer you are a brave battler against the disease, but when you have Alzheimer’s you are an old fart. That’s how people see you. It makes you feel quite alone.

My mom’s one of 13 siblings, and they all got six kids, and till I was 13 everybody was in Compton.

Movies are fun, but they are no cure for cancer.

Most women in my family start to get sick and start dying in their 40s, and I am going to be very happy to become 50 and 60. I love getting older.

We all live with cancer, whether it is present in ourselves or affects someone we love.

My gold, my money couldn’t stop cancer from appearing on my body. If they can’t save me, then I don’t need them.

It doesn’t sound too good to say I am the son of a landowner, so let us rather say I am the grandson of exploited Galician peasants.

I think that cancer is a life form that exists out there, and it exists in us. I think even the concept of healing is a spiritual principle that we have to really look at. I think the word itself is something we ought to get rid of, because it implies that there is illness – that there is something wrong.

Every time I see documentaries or infomercials about little kids with cancer, I just freak out. It affects me on the highest emotional level… Anytime I think about it, it makes me sadder than anything I can think of.