What we need in medical schools is not to teach empathy, as much as to preserve it.
ABRAHAM VERGHESEAccording to Shiva, life is in the end about fixing holes. Shiva didn’t speak in metaphors. fixing holes is precisely what he did.
More Abraham Verghese Quotes
-
-
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.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE -
A beautiful literary collection that tells of today’s country doctor, somewhat removed from our romantic black-bag image of days gone by, but still fulfilling an essential need in caring for spread-out populations.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE -
To be around someone whose self-confidence is more than what our first glance led us to expect is seductive.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE -
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 -
Ignorance was just as dynamic as knowledge, and it grew in the same proportion.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE -
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 -
Life, too, is like that. You live it forward, but understand it backward. It is only when you stop and look to the rear that you see the corpse caught under your wheel.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE -
Be careful! Travel expands the mind and loosens the bowels.
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 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.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE -
He had so many ways of climbing into the tree house in his head, escaping the madness below, and pulling the ladder up behind him.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE -
Why is my leg broken on the ski trip and not anyone else’s?’ And I think that medicine has done a terrible job of addressing that spiritual violation.
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 -
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.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE -
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.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE -
If you keep saying your slippers aren’t yours, then you’ll die searching, you’ll die bitter, always feeling you were promised more.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE -
Sandip Roy has broken new ground in this tale of the modern Indian family. A lovely read
ABRAHAM VERGHESE -
Pray tell us, what’s your favorite number?”… “Shiva jumped up to the board, uninvited, and wrote 10,213,223″… “
ABRAHAM VERGHESE -
Yesterday misspent can’t be recall’d Vanity makes beauty contemptible Wisdom is more valuable than riches.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE -
According to Shiva, life is in the end about fixing holes. Shiva didn’t speak in metaphors. fixing holes is precisely what he did.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE -
I’ve had my share of angels.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE -
God will judge us, Mr. Harris, by–by what we did to relieve the suffering of our fellow human beings. I don’t think God cares what doctrine we embrace.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE -
There is that lovely feeling of one reader telling another, ‘You must read this.’
ABRAHAM VERGHESE -
As she bent over the child she realized that the tragedy of death had to do entirely with what was left unfulfilled.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE -
There is a point when grief exceeds the human capacity to emote, and as a result one is strangely composed-
ABRAHAM VERGHESE -
What treatment in an emergency is administered by ear?
ABRAHAM VERGHESE