“Before health problems show up there is always a loss of self-respect or expression.”

"Seven American Nights", Orbit 20 (1978), ed. Damon Knight, Reprinted in Gene Wolfe, The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories and Other Stories (1980), Reprinted in Gene Wolfe, The Best of Gene Wolfe (2009)
Fiction

Source: The Second Sin (1973), p. 56.

2015, Eulogy for the Honorable Reverend Clementa Pinckney (June 2015)
Context: For too long, we’ve been blind to the unique mayhem that gun violence inflicts upon this nation. Sporadically, our eyes are open: When eight of our brothers and sisters are cut down in a church basement, 12 in a movie theater, 26 in an elementary school. But I hope we also see the 30 precious lives cut short by gun violence in this country every single day; the countless more whose lives are forever changed -- the survivors crippled, the children traumatized and fearful every day as they walk to school, the husband who will never feel his wife’s warm touch, the entire communities whose grief overflows every time they have to watch what happened to them happen to some other place. The vast majority of Americans -- the majority of gun owners -- want to do something about this. We see that now. And I'm convinced that by acknowledging the pain and loss of others, even as we respect the traditions and ways of life that make up this beloved country -- by making the moral choice to change, we express God’s grace.

Source: The Devotion of Suspect X

[Where in the World are SUSY & WIMPS? - Nima Arkani-Hamed, 20 July 2017, YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKVXxcbJ4YY] (12:36 of 1:40:31)

As quoted in Forbes Magazine (3 December 2001)
Context: Without cancer, I never would have won a single Tour de France. Cancer taught me a plan for more purposeful living, and that in turn taught me how to train and to win more purposefully. It taught me that pain has a reason, and that sometimes the experience of losing things — whether health or a car or an old sense of self — has its own value in the scheme of life. Pain and loss are great enhancers.

Source: The World Teacher for All Humanity (2007)

Rates of Change (with Ty Franck as James S. A. Corey), in Meeting Infinity (2015), edited by Jonathan Strahan, and published by Solaris ISBN 978-1-84997-922-1, e-book edition