From “When Breath Becomes Air” P. 39

I had come to see language as an almost supernatural force, existing between people, bringing our brains, shielded in centimeter-thick skulls, into communion. A word meant something only between people, and life’s meaning, it’s virtue, had something to do with the depth of the relationships we form. It was the relational aspect of humans – i.e., “human relationality” – that undergirded meaning. Yet somehow, this process existed in brains and bodies, subject to their own physiological imperatives, prone to breaking and failing. There must be a way, I thought, that the language of life as experienced — of passion, of hunger, of love — bore some relationship, however convoluted, to the language of neurons, digestive tracts, and heartbeats.”