Abraham Verghese Quotes

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.

It is the task of a lifetime. We’ll leave much unfinished for the next generation.

If seems almost un-American to enjoy delays, and perhaps enjoy is not the best word, but certainly a delayed flight

There is that lovely feeling of one reader telling another, ‘You must read this.’

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

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.

That’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.

According to Shiva, life is in the end about fixing holes. Shiva didn’t speak in metaphors. fixing holes is precisely what he did.

Empathy can be replaced by cynicism.

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.