We are all fixing what is broken. It is the task of a lifetime. We’ll leave much unfinished for the next generation.
ABRAHAM VERGHESEWe’re losing a ritual. We’re losing a ritual that I believe is transformative, transcendent, and is at the heart of the patient-physician relationship.
More Abraham Verghese Quotes
-
-
He was teaching me how to die, just as he’d taught me how to live.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE -
Life for the Italians was what it was, no more and no less, an interlude between meals
ABRAHAM VERGHESE -
It was all I had, all I’ve ever had, the only currency, the only proof that I was alive. Memory.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE -
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 -
I’m a great believer in geography being destiny.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE -
There is a point when grief exceeds the human capacity to emote, and as a result one is strangely composed-
ABRAHAM VERGHESE -
Another day in paradise’ was his inevitable pronouncement when he settled his head on his pillow. Now I understand what that meant: the uneventful day was a precious gift.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE -
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 -
I was taking care of people my age who were dying. The constant feeling, hearing from them, was that life is transient and can end very quickly, so don’t postpone your dreams.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE -
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.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE -
We know the average American physician interrupts their patient in 14 seconds.
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 -
Pray tell us, what’s your favorite number?
ABRAHAM VERGHESE -
If we are fortunate, we ‘beat’ the cancer. If not, we are posthumously praised for having ‘succumbed after a long battle.’
ABRAHAM VERGHESE -
…guilt leads to righteous action, but rarely is it the right action.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE