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 VERGHESEHe was teaching me how to die, just as he’d taught me how to live.
More Abraham Verghese Quotes
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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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What we need in medical schools is not to teach empathy, as much as to preserve it.
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When a man is a mystery to himself you can hardly call him mysterious.
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Patients know in a heartbeat if they’re getting a clumsy exam.
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When we cannot cure or save a life, our patients can at least feel cared for. It should be a basic human right.
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I’ve had my share of angels.
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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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The only way to know where you are is by where you have just been.
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A rich man’s faults are covered with money, but a surgeon’s faults are covered with earth.
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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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Pray tell us, what’s your favorite number?
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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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No blade can puncture the human heart like the well-chosen words of a spiteful son.
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What did it say when a man had fewer clothes than books?
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Now, as to the problem of how much health care costs and how we reform health care … it is another story altogether.
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I’ve always wanted to write a book like that, with the sense that you are contributing to the discourse in middle America,
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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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A discourse that begins at a book club in a living room, but then spreads. That is meaningful to me.
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I always wondered if the good people who send us bibles really think that hookworm and hunger are healed by scripture? Our patients are illiterate.
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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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Being the first born gives you great patience.
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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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My sense is that the wonderful technology that we have to visualize the inside of the body often leaves physicians feeling that the exam is a waste of time and so they may shortchange the ritual.
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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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She had always assumed that she would have years to sort out the meaning of life…
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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