What we need in medical schools is not to teach empathy, as much as to preserve it.
ABRAHAM VERGHESERituals, anthropologists will tell us, are about transformation.
More Abraham Verghese Quotes
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At times, with today’s advances in technology, medicine in rural America looks very like it does in America’s cities, but the variety of practices is enormous.
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Patients know in a heartbeat if they’re getting a clumsy exam.
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I grew up and I found my purpose and it was to become a physician.
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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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The only way to know where you are is by where you have just been.
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This is my life, I thought…I have excised the cancer from my past, cut it out; I have crossed the high plains, descended into the desert, traversed oceans, and planted my feet in new soil
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I’m a great believer in geography being destiny.
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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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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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The crookedness of the serpent is still straight enough to slide through the snake hole.
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Being the first born gives you great patience.
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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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Why settle for ‘Three Blind Mice’ when you can can play the ‘Gloria’? No, not Bach’s ‘Gloria.’ Yours! Your ‘Gloria’ lives within you.
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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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Now, as to the problem of how much health care costs and how we reform health care … it is another story altogether.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE