Sometimes this wound occurs at the moment of birth, sometimes it happens later. We are all fixing what is broken.
ABRAHAM VERGHESEBy visiting patients in their home, by helping them come to terms with their illness, I could heal when I could not cure.
More Abraham Verghese Quotes
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You live it forward, but understand it backward.
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They realize the no money, no church service, no eulogy, no funeral procession no matter how elaborate, can remove the legacy of a mean spirit.
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Literature is a beautiful way of keeping the imagination alive, of visiting worlds you would never have time to in your day-to-day life. It keeps you abreast of a wider spectrum of human activities.
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We come unbidden into this life, and if we are lucky we find a purpose beyond starvation, misery, and early death which, lest we forget, is the common lot.
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What we need in medical schools is not to teach empathy, as much as to preserve it.
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I think America is really in denial about the degree to which residents, particularly foreign medical graduates, man the county hospitals of this country, and but for their services, I’m not sure how exactly we could manage.
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I still find the best way to understand a hospitalized patient is not by staring at the computer screen but by going to see the patient; it’s only at the bedside that I can figure out what is important.
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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?’ ‘
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Pray tell us, what’s your favorite number?”… “Shiva jumped up to the board, uninvited, and wrote 10,213,223″… “
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My VIP patients often regret so many things on their deathbeds. They regret the bitterness they’ll leave in people’s hearts.
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If it does nothing else, allows one the opportunity to make prolonged observations about one’s fellow travelers.
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A discourse that begins at a book club in a living room, but then spreads. That is meaningful to me.
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Geography is destiny.
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There is a point when grief exceeds the human capacity to emote, and as a result one is strangely composed-
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Being the first born gives you great patience.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE