I joke, but I only half joke, that if you come to one of our hospitals missing a limb, no one will believe you till they get a CAT scan, MRI, or orthopedic consult.
ABRAHAM VERGHESEStill, it’s an apt metaphor for our profession. But there’s another kind of hole, and that is the wound that divides family.
More Abraham Verghese Quotes
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What treatment in an emergency is administered by ear?
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I’m a great believer in geography being destiny.
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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.
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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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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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Make something beautiful of your life.
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You are an instrument of God. Don’t leave the instrument sitting in its case, my son. Play! Leave no part of your instrument unexplored. .
ABRAHAM VERGHESE -
Though I am fascinated by knowledge, I am even more fascinated by wisdom.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE -
The flip side of suicide is that it leaves a lingering question in the minds of the people who survived. Its like a cancer thats metastasized. The suicide is the cancer and the metastasis is all these people saying, Why? Why? Why?
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In writing, as in medicine, there are no short cuts. You need stamina.
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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 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.
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As she bent over the child she realized that the tragedy of death had to do entirely with what was left unfulfilled.
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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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Ignorance was just as dynamic as knowledge, and it grew in the same proportion.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE