When our bodies are violated by this horrible disease of cancer, we're in total shock because it's so unexpected.

Dementia is our most-feared illness, more than heart disease or cancer.

It was a total shock. It was like I was hit in the head with a brick. I went into complete shock.

There is only one kind of shock worse than the totally unexpected: the expected for which one has refused to prepare.

The way I look at it is, cancer research is absolutely nonpartisan. Cancer is very democratic in the sense that it attacks people regardless of their race, their gender, their national background, or their political persuasions.

In 2005, cancer may still be the disease that cannot speak its name, but it is also the great leveller - cutting across divisions of class, income, status and success - and, sadly, so ubiquitous that few people's lives are untouched by it. Almost without exception, those we approached gave their time and reminiscences not only with great open-heartedness but with touching concern for my own welfare.