As she bent over the child she realized that the tragedy of death had to do entirely with what was left unfulfilled.
ABRAHAM VERGHESEIn writing, as in medicine, there are no short cuts. You need stamina.
More Abraham Verghese Quotes
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Sometimes this wound occurs at the moment of birth, sometimes it happens later. We are all fixing what is broken.
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It’s an eerie feeling, as if my old mentor is not just in the room, but in my shoes, using me as his mouthpiece.
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We know the average American physician interrupts their patient in 14 seconds.
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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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For one who has an interest in the body as text, airports are treasure troves of information.
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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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Certainly when I got to medical school, I had role models of the kind of physicians I wanted to be.
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What we are fighting isn’t godlessness–this is the most godly country on earth.
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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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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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Though I am fascinated by knowledge, I am even more fascinated by wisdom.
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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.
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The greatest sin is not finding it, ignoring what God made possible in you
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You live it forward, but understand it backward.
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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 Country Doctor Revisited captures the trials and tribulations of medicine, but also the satisfaction and the extraordinary rewards that come to those who embrace such a practice.
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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.
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She felt the familiar calmness of an emergency, but she understood the falseness of that feeling, now that it was her life at stake.
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We are all fixing what is broken. It is the task of a lifetime. We’ll leave much unfinished for the next generation.
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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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I’ve had my share of angels.
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According to Shiva, life is in the end about fixing holes. Shiva didn’t speak in metaphors. fixing holes is precisely what he did.
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He was teaching me how to die, just as he’d taught me how to live.
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Patients know in a heartbeat if they’re getting a clumsy exam.
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In an emergency, what treatment is given by ear? Words of Comfort.
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The crookedness of the serpent is still straight enough to slide through the snake hole.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE