black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

I’ve had my share of angels.

Abraham Verghese

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.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE

Country Foreign Graduate Man Medical Men Resident Thinking
When a man is a mystery to himself you can hardly call him mysterious.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE

Call Hardly Himself Man Mysterious Mystery
Ignorance was just as dynamic as knowledge, and it grew in the same proportion.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE

Dynamic Grew Ignorance Knowledge Proportion Same
In an emergency, what treatment is given by ear? Words of Comfort.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE

Comfort Ears Emergencies Treatment Word
We’re losing a ritual. We’re losing a ritual that I believe is transformative, transcendent, and is at the heart of the patient-physician relationship.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE

Believe Herat Inspiration Motivation Patient Transcendent
He was teaching me how to die, just as he’d taught me how to live.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE

Die Laugh Life Live Manner Taught Teaching
In America, we have always taken it as an article of faith that we ‘battle’ cancer; we attack it with knives, we poison it with chemotherapy or we blast it with radiation.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE

Always Attack Battle Cancer Country Poison Taken
By visiting patients in their home, by helping them come to terms with their illness, I could heal when I could not cure.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE

Helping Home Patient
To be around someone whose self-confidence is more than what our first glance led us to expect is seductive.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE

Confidence Expect Around First Glance More Seductive Self
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 VERGHESE

Believe Cat Hospital Inspiration Joke Limb Missing Motivation Scan
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?’ ‘
ABRAHAM VERGHESE

Disease Element Good Handling Healing Job Mean Physical Spiritual
The only way to know where you are is by where you have just been.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE

By Dream Success Hard Work Know Only Way
When I wake to the gift of yet another sunrise my first thought is to rouse him and say, I owe you the sight of morning.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE

Another Gift Morning Sight Sunrise Wake
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

Absurdity Arrive Descend Hole Job Place Point Preserve relief Yourself
Students undergo a conversion in the third year of medical school – not pre-clinical to clinical, but pre-cynical to cynical.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE

Clinical Conversion Cynical Medical School Student Undergo Year
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.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE

Endeavor Good Heart Human Key Limitless Medicine Requiring Science Thinking

I’ve had my share of angels.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

I’ve had my share of angels.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Abraham Verghese Quotes