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You live it forward, but understand it backward.

Abraham Verghese

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.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE

Eerie Feeling Mentor Mouthpiece Old Room Shoe
Yesterday misspent can’t be recall’d Vanity makes beauty contemptible Wisdom is more valuable than riches.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE

Contemptible Misspent Rich Valuable Vanity Wisdom Yesterday
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.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE

Advance Medicine Technology Time Today Variety
The bottom line: health care reform is about the patient, not about the physician.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE

Bottom Care Health Line Patient Physician Reform
Not only our actions, but also our omissions, become our destiny.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE

Action Become Destiny Omisison
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
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.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE

Angry Dream Feeling Hurt Loved Myself Togetherness Unreasonable
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
Make something beautiful of your life.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE

Beautiful Create Dream Journey Life m Wonder Something
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

Backward Caught Forward Life Look Near Stop Understand Wheel
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
We know the average American physician interrupts their patient in 14 seconds.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE

Average Healthcare Physicians
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.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE

Conscious Exact Moment Professor Teacher Trotting Year
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

God Instrument Leave Play Sitting Son Three
Why is my leg broken on the ski trip and not anyone else’s?’ And I think that medicine has done a terrible job of addressing that spiritual violation.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE

Addressing Anyone Broken Job Leg Medicine Terrible Trip
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.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE

Alive Beautiful Imagination Keeping Literature Time World

You live it forward, but understand it backward.

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You live it forward, but understand it backward.

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