I had to learn to lie on the sofa and do nothing but think thoughts.

How does one continue to live when suddenly thrown off the path of life, when death approaches unexpectedly? In his diary of a cancer diagnosis, Christoph Schlingensief invites us to share in his intense search for himself, for God, for a love of life. In January 2008, the well-known film, theater, and opera director, performance and installation artist Christoph Schlingensief is diagnosed with lung cancer. One lung is removed, followed by chemotherapy and radiation, and the prognosis is uncertain—a nightmare of deprivation of freedom from which there seems to be no awakening. Yet just a few days after the diagnosis, Christoph Schlingensief begins to speak, with himself, with friends, with his deceased father, with God—almost always recorded on a dictaphone that captures these conversations. Sometimes angry and defiant, sometimes sad and desperate, but always with touching poetry and warmth, he circles the questions that the illness imposes on him: Who have you been? What can you still become? How do you continue to work when the pace of the world has suddenly become too fast? How do you learn to adapt to illness? How do you die when things take a turn for the worse? And where is God, anyway? This moving protocol of self-inquiry is a gift to all of us, to the sick as well as the healthy, who all too often lack the words when illness and death intrude upon life. A cure of words against silence—and not least, a declaration of love for this world.