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 VERGHESEThat’s the funny thing about America–the blessed thing. As many people as there are to hold you back, there are angels whose humanity makes up for all the others.
More Abraham Verghese Quotes
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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.
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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 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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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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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.
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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.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE -
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.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE -
Rituals, anthropologists will tell us, are about transformation.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE -
No blade can puncture the human heart like the well-chosen words of a spiteful son.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE -
I grew up and I found my purpose and it was to become a physician.
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She had always assumed that she would have years to sort out the meaning of life…
ABRAHAM VERGHESE -
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.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE -
Make something beautiful of your life.
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I still find the best way to understand a hospitalized patient is not by staring at the computer screen but by going to see the patient; it’s only at the bedside that I can figure out what is important.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE -
I have been the apprentice, paid my dues, and have just become master of my ship. But when I look down, why do I see the ancient, tarred, mud-stained slippers that I buried at the start of the journey still stuck to my feet?
ABRAHAM VERGHESE