Cancer is like another form of life. It's closely related to healthy life. A healthy body is one form of life. Cancer is in a way nature's experiment with life.
Cancer cells come pre-programmed to execute a well-defined cascade of changes, seemingly designed to facilitate both their enhanced survival and their dissemination through the bloodstream. There is even an air of conspiracy in the way that tumours use chemical signals to create cancer-friendly niches in remote organs.
Astonishingly, in spite of decades of research, there is no agreed theory of cancer, no explanation for why, inside almost all healthy cells, there lurks a highly efficient cancer subroutine that can be activated by a variety of agents - radiation, chemicals, inflammation and infection.
I was working with stem cells as part of a NASA programme. We realised that the science of stem-cell proliferation was also fundamental to cancer cells when cancer enters the phase of metastasis.
You don't fight cancer with grants, or heart disease with grants.
Gambling is so pervasive in Nevada that maybe the state should just go the whole hog. There'd be gum machines that dispensed chewing tobacco if you lost. You could gamble for the toilet paper in public bathroom stalls. And fill out Keno cards in an attempt to win cancer therapy at the hospital.
Weakness is worse than cancer, I think. It's a kind of psychological or spiritual cancer. And if you have a goal in your life, you'll get psychological immunity. Psychological immunity is a kind of optimism, just like spring.
I don't even know if I will be around next year. My cancers are so bad that I think I've arrived at the end of the road. What a pity. I would like to live not only because I love life so much, but because I'd like to see the result of the trial. I do think I will be found guilty.
Singing at the Opening Ceremonies of the Sydney Olympics in 2000 was amazing and, probably the highlight of this decade is the opening of the Olivia Newton-John Cancer and Wellness Centre in my hometown of Melbourne, Australia.
Breast Cancer is not necessarily a death sentence, stay strong and centered and be involved in all aspects of your treatment.
The "Great Walk to Beijing" was a fundraiser for my cancer center. It was a three-week trek with fellow cancer "thrivers," including celebrities ranging from Joan Rivers to Leeza Gibbons, and Olympians.
The idea is to encourage men to go with their wives and screen. So, if the wife is going to go and do her screening, then the man can go and do his baseline screening, too. Men need to be aware of the health of their bodies, as well - prostate cancer and breast cancer are almost on the same level.
We all have idealism. We think we're healthy and then, all of a sudden, one day, you have cancer. The truth has a mind of its own.
Cancer is the growth of madness denied.
As an actor you're only as good as the things you're offered. And there just weren't any female directors offering me things. So when you dissect that, you realize there aren't women offering you things because they don't have the opportunities. I work to raise money for women's cancers; I use my voice for violence against women.
I think it's important for me as an actor that I say these are the issues I'm going to be committed to. One of them for me is women and children's health around the world and their rights;the other is ovarian cancer.
Those who say that climate change doesn't exist are being understood as the flat-earthers that they are, as the people who deny the link between smoking and cancer, as the people who denied the link between HIV and AIDS.
Crazy to think that we're having surgery, we're trying to excise cancer, we don't know where the cancer is. We're trying to preserve nerves; we can't see where they are.
There are whole states where people [with addiction or mental health issues] can't get to a doctor. If that were true of pancreatic cancer, if that were true of heart disease, if that were true of diabetes, we'd all understand that it made no sense at all. And yet we somehow approach mental health from a very different standard.
I think books can cure cancer and grow back hair. I can't say it enough. For me, that's why it's so syrupy. It's both syrupy and over the top, and overly sincere, and also dead true. What else can I tell you? A writer can't catch a cab half the time, but when there's a demagogue, when there's a government that wants to suppress, there's a reason that writers end up getting in trouble. It's such a subversive form that can really change people.
While I had cancer, I wrote these twenty-two personal essays about how I lived my life backed by Zen and writing.
The first thing is how awful cancer was, the experience. When you first go through it, you're just trying to survive. But when I wrote about it, I really digested it. It was unbearable but I had practice behind me.
So even though I couldn't bear writing about cancer, I faced it every day.
I read Eve Ensler and thought it was fabulous. Not only that, but it was really the only thing I could relate to about cancer.
The odd thing is, that I wrote The Great Spring while I had cancer and it's not about cancer. It was after I was done with cancer that I wrote a book about it.
