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If ‘ecstasy’ meant the sudden intrusion of the sacred into the ordinary, then it had just happened to me.

Abraham Verghese

I love to read poetry but I haven’t written anything that I’m willing to show anybody.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE

Anybody Love Poetry Read Reading Show Willing Written
We’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.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE

Believe Herat Inspiration Motivation Patient Transcendent
What did it say when a man had fewer clothes than books?
ABRAHAM VERGHESE

Book Clothes Fewer Man Men
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
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

Climbing Escaping House Ladder Many Pulling Tree Way
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.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE

Conscious Exact Moment Professor Teacher Trotting Year
We have the sense that medical students come to medicine with a great capacity to understand the suffering of patients.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE

Capacity Great Medicine Patient Sense Student Suffering Year
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.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE

Alive Beautiful Imagination Keeping Literature Time World
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.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE

Country Foreign Graduate Man Medical Men Resident Thinking
I grew up and I found my purpose and it was to become a physician.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE

Become Found Grew Physician Purpose Up
If we are fortunate, we ‘beat’ the cancer. If not, we are posthumously praised for having ‘succumbed after a long battle.’
ABRAHAM VERGHESE

Battle Beat Cancer Fortunate Long Posthumously Praised Succumbed
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
Tell us please, what treatment in an emergency is administered by ear?”….I met his gaze and I did not blink. “Words of comfort,” I said to my father.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE

Administered Blink Comfort Ear Emergency Father Gaze Treatment
A discourse that begins at a book club in a living room, but then spreads. That is meaningful to me.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE

Begin Boo Club Discourse Living Meaningful Room Spread
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

Always Bitter Feeding Keep Promise Saying Searching Slipper
A rich man’s faults are covered with money, but a surgeon’s faults are covered with earth.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE

Covered Earth Fault Man Money Surgeon

If ‘ecstasy’ meant the sudden intrusion of the sacred into the ordinary, then it had just happened to me.

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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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