Abraham Verghese quotes - page 2

The key to your happiness is to own your slippers, own who you are, own how you look, own your family, own the talents you have, and own the ones you don't. If you keep saying your slippers aren't yours, then you'll die searching, you'll die bitter, always feeling you were promised more. Not only our actions, but also our omissions, become our destiny. (Abraham Verghese)
In writing, as in medicine, there are no short cuts. You need stamina. View quote
Abraham Verghese
A rich man's faults are covered with money, but a surgeon's faults are covered with earth. View quote
Abraham Verghese
Students undergo a conversion in the third year of medical school - not pre-clinical to clinical, but pre-cynical to cynical. View quote
Abraham Verghese
I was taking care of people my age who were dying. The constant feeling, hearing from them, was that life is transient and can end very quickly, so don't postpone your dreams. View quote
Abraham Verghese
By visiting patients in their home, by helping them come to terms with their illness, I could heal when I could not cure. View quote
Abraham Verghese
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. View quote
Abraham Verghese
Being the first born gives you great patience. View quote
Abraham Verghese
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. View quote
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. View quote
Abraham Verghese
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 have the sense that medical students come to medicine with a great capacity to understand the suffering of patients. And then by the end of the third year they completely lose that ability, partly because we teach them the specialized language of medicine. View quote
Abraham Verghese
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. View quote
Abraham Verghese
When a man is a mystery to himself you can hardly call him mysterious. View quote
Abraham Verghese
Another day in paradise' was his inevitable pronouncement when he settled his head on his pillow. Now I understand what that meant: the uneventful day was a precious gift. View quote
Abraham Verghese
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. View quote
Abraham Verghese
The bottom line: health care reform is about the patient, not about the physician. View quote
Abraham Verghese
I think we can see how blessed we are in America to have access to the kind of health care we do if we are insured, and even if uninsured, how there is a safety net. Now, as to the problem of how much health care costs and how we reform health care ... it is another story altogether. View quote
Abraham Verghese
I love to read poetry but I haven't written anything that I'm willing to show anybody. View quote
Abraham Verghese
My VIP patients often regret so many things on their deathbeds. They regret the bitterness they'll leave in people's hearts. They realize the no money, no church service, no eulogy, no funeral procession no matter how elaborate, can remove the legacy of a mean spirit. View quote
Abraham Verghese
What we are fighting isn't godlessness--this is the most godly country on earth. We aren't even fighting disease. Its poverty. Money for food, medicines... that helps. When we cannot cure or save a life, our patients can at least feel cared for. It should be a basic human right. (Abraham Verghese)
It was all I had, all I've ever had, the only currency, the only proof that I was alive. Memory. View quote
Abraham Verghese
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. View quote
Abraham Verghese
Be careful! Travel expands the mind and loosens the bowels. View quote
Abraham Verghese
The crookedness of the serpent is still straight enough to slide through the snake hole. View quote
Abraham Verghese