Stitches: A Memoir Mortality Quotes

Panel 1.49 is an X-ray image of David's head, neck, and shoulders. It's also a single panel in the middle of a white page. This is the first X-ray we see, and it's an image that will change David's life—not for the better, as his father thinks, but for the worse.

You might not think that fearing for your life could make you feel ecstasy, but it's the same kind of controlled fear you get when you're on a roller coaster. You know you're not going to die, but you can't help imagining what would happen if the car lost control.

David sees the fetuses in the jar on the fourth floor of his dad's hospital for the first time. The image of the children who died before they were born, trapped in eternal silence, will haunt him throughout his life.

Because the young David knows this, we assume his mother told him. However, she won't tell him about his own health problems or explain to him that he almost died.

David's mother was fatherless; David is now motherless. Even though she's there physically, the lack of love and nurturing with which she grew up keeps her from loving and nurturing her own children.

David first learns he has cancer when he finds his mother's letter to his grandma. It's the old-fashioned version of snooping through somebody's email.

The closest David's mom can get to telling him she loves him when she thinks he's dying is replacing his copy of Lolita, which she threw out because she thought it was pornographic.

David's mom was able to communicate with him—although in a very limited way—by giving him the words he loves: Nabokov's words. But when she realizes he's not dying and might actually be able to read those words, she takes that communication back.

David's grandma may have burned him, but she actually set her husband on fire. Okay, her house with her husband in it, but still—same thing. If David grew up to have issues with women, we wouldn't exactly wonder where they come from.