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.
ABRAHAM VERGHESENo blade can puncture the human heart like the well-chosen words of a spiteful son.
More Abraham Verghese Quotes
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Life for the Italians was what it was, no more and no less, an interlude between meals
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Students undergo a conversion in the third year of medical school – not pre-clinical to clinical, but pre-cynical to cynical.
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In writing, as in medicine, there are no short cuts. You need stamina.
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The greatest sin is not finding it, ignoring what God made possible in you
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Being the first born gives you great patience.
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It was all I had, all I’ve ever had, the only currency, the only proof that I was alive. Memory.
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The bottom line: health care reform is about the patient, not about the physician.
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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.
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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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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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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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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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There is that lovely feeling of one reader telling another, ‘You must read this.’
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How we treat the least of our brethren,… that’s the measure of this country.
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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.
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Not only our actions, but also our omissions, become our destiny.
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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.
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We aren’t even fighting disease. Its poverty. Money for food, medicines… that helps.
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By visiting patients in their home, by helping them come to terms with their illness, I could heal when I could not cure.
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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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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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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 crookedness of the serpent is still straight enough to slide through the snake hole.
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Ignorance was just as dynamic as knowledge, and it grew in the same proportion.
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Make something beautiful of your life.
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Geography is destiny.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE