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Wasn’t that the definition of home? Not where you are from, but where you are wanted

Abraham Verghese

The rituals we use for marriage, baptism or inaugurating a president are as elaborate as they are because we associate the ritual with a major life passage, the crossing of a critical threshold, or in other words, with transformation.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE

Associate Baptism Elaborate Inauguration Marriage President Ritual
When I use the word ‘healing’, by that I mean that every disease has a physical element that we’re very good at handling, but there’s always a sense of the violation. ‘Why me?’ ‘
ABRAHAM VERGHESE

Disease Element Good Handling Healing Job Mean Physical Spiritual
I think we learn from medicine everywhere that it is, at its heart, a human endeavor, requiring good science but also a limitless curiosity and interest in your fellow human being, and that the physician-patient relationship is key; all else follows from it.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE

Endeavor Good Heart Human Key Limitless Medicine Requiring Science Thinking
No matter what ailed you, you went to see the barber surgeon who wound up cupping you, bleeding you, purging you.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE

Barber Bleeding Cupping Giving Matter Purging Surgeon Teeth
How we treat the least of our brethren,… that’s the measure of this country.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE

Brethren Country Least Measure Treat
By visiting patients in their home, by helping them come to terms with their illness, I could heal when I could not cure.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE

Helping Home Patient
She had always assumed that she would have years to sort out the meaning of life…
ABRAHAM VERGHESE

Assumed Bent Child Children Life Meaning Over Realized Sort Tragedy Year
…guilt leads to righteous action, but rarely is it the right action.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE

Action Guilt Lead Rarely Right Righteous
When we cannot cure or save a life, our patients can at least feel cared for. It should be a basic human right.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE

Basic Cared Feel Human Life Patient Right Save
No blade can puncture the human heart like the well-chosen words of a spiteful son.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE

Blade Heart Human Parenting Puncture Son Spiteful
In America, we have always taken it as an article of faith that we ‘battle’ cancer; we attack it with knives, we poison it with chemotherapy or we blast it with radiation.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE

Always Attack Battle Cancer Country Poison Taken
It’s an eerie feeling, as if my old mentor is not just in the room, but in my shoes, using me as his mouthpiece.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE

Eerie Feeling Mentor Mouthpiece Old Room Shoe
Not only our actions, but also our omissions, become our destiny.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE

Action Become Destiny Omisison
And pray, why would this number interest us?” “It is the only number that describes itself when you read it, ‘One zero, two ones, three twos, two threes’.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE

Describe Interest Number One Only Pray Read Two Would Zero
I always wondered if the good people who send us bibles really think that hookworm and hunger are healed by scripture? Our patients are illiterate.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE

Hookworm Hunger People Scripture Thinking
She died chasing greatness and never saw it each time it was in her hand, so she kept seeking it elsewhere, but never understood the work required to get it or to keep it.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE

Chasing Died Each Elsewhere Greatness Hand never Saw Seeking Time

Wasn’t that the definition of home? Not where you are from, but where you are wanted

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Wasn’t that the definition of home? Not where you are from, but where you are wanted

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