Empathy can be replaced by cynicism.
ABRAHAM VERGHESEStill, it’s an apt metaphor for our profession. But there’s another kind of hole, and that is the wound that divides family.
More Abraham Verghese Quotes
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There are moments as a teacher when I’m conscious that I’m trotting out the same exact phrase my professor used with me years ago.
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Don’t Let Him Know is a rich, evocative and brilliantly told tale of family, of loyalties, and of love that must stay secret.
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I’ve had my share of angels.
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I believe in black holes. I believe that as the universe empties into nothingness, past and future will smack together in the last swirl around the drain.
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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.
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The crookedness of the serpent is still straight enough to slide through the snake hole.
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My intent wasn’t to save the world as much as to heal myself. Few doctors will admit this, certainly not young ones, but subconsciously, in entering the profession
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I have been the apprentice, paid my dues, and have just become master of my ship. But when I look down, why do I see the ancient, tarred, mud-stained slippers that I buried at the start of the journey still stuck to my feet?
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If ‘ecstasy’ meant the sudden intrusion of the sacred into the ordinary, then it had just happened to me.
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That’s the funny thing about America–the blessed thing. As many people as there are to hold you back, there are angels whose humanity makes up for all the others.
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At times, with today’s advances in technology, medicine in rural America looks very like it does in America’s cities, but the variety of practices is enormous.
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Rituals, anthropologists will tell us, are about transformation.
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The greatest sin is not finding it, ignoring what God made possible in you
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Your job is to preserve yourself, not to descend into their hole. It’s a relief when you arrive at this place, the point of absurdity, because then you are free, you owe them nothing.
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When you win, you often lose, that’s just a fact. There’s no currency to straighten a warped spirit, or open a closed heart, a selfish heart.
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I think we can see how blessed we are in America to have access to the kind of health care we do if we are insured, and even if uninsured, how there is a safety net.
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I was angry with myself because I still loved her, or at least I loved that dream of our togetherness. My feelings were unreasonable, irrational, and I couldn’t change them. That hurt.
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By visiting patients in their home, by helping them come to terms with their illness, I could heal when I could not cure.
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When a man is a mystery to himself you can hardly call him mysterious.
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The key to your happiness is to own your slippers, own who you are, own how you look, own your family, own the talents you have, and own the ones you don’t.
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The bottom line: health care reform is about the patient, not about the physician.
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Pray tell us, what’s your favorite number?
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Now, as to the problem of how much health care costs and how we reform health care … it is another story altogether.
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What we are fighting isn’t godlessness–this is the most godly country on earth.
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You are an instrument of God. Don’t leave the instrument sitting in its case, my son. Play! Leave no part of your instrument unexplored. .
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Wasn’t that the definition of home? Not where you are from, but where you are wanted
ABRAHAM VERGHESE