Abraham Verghese Quotes

I'm a great believer in geography being destiny.

She had always assumed that she would have years to sort out the meaning of life... As she bent over the child she realized that the tragedy of death had to do entirely with what was left unfulfilled.

...guilt leads to righteous action, but rarely is it the right action.

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.

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.

The crookedness of the serpent is still straight enough to slide through the snake hole.

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.

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.

In an emergency, what treatment is given by ear? Words of Comfort.

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.

When you win, you often lose, that's just a fact. There's no currency to straighten a warped spirit, or open a closed heart, a selfish heart.

He was teaching me how to die, just as he'd taught me how to live.

No blade can puncture the human heart like the well-chosen words of a spiteful son.

There is a point when grief exceeds the human capacity to emote, and as a result one is strangely composed-

Geography is destiny.

What treatment in an emergency is administered by ear?

Not only our actions, but also our omissions, become our destiny.

Wasn't that the definition of home? Not where you are from, but where you are wanted

What did it say when a man had fewer clothes than books?

Don't Let Him Know is a rich, evocative and brilliantly told tale of family, of loyalties, and of love that must stay secret. Sandip Roy has broken new ground in this tale of the modern Indian family. A lovely read

She died chasing greatness and never saw it each time it was in her hand, so she kept seeking it elsewhere, but never understood the work required to get it or to keep it.

It was all I had, all I've ever had, the only currency, the only proof that I was alive. Memory.

Life for the Italians was what it was, no more and no less, an interlude between meals

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.

Be careful! Travel expands the mind and loosens the bowels.

The most important innovation in medicine to come in the next 10 years: the power of the human hand.

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. 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.

Though I am fascinated by knowledge, I am even more fascinated by wisdom.

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.

I believe in black holes. I believe that as the universe empties into nothingness, past and future will smack together in the last swirl around the drain.

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.

No matter what ailed you, you went to see the barber surgeon who wound up cupping you, bleeding you, purging you. And, oh yes, if you wanted, he would give you a haircut and pull your tooth while he was at it.

Make something beautiful of your life.

Rituals, anthropologists will tell us, are about transformation. The rituals we use for marriage, baptism or inaugurating a president are as elaborate as they are because we associate the ritual with a major life passage, the crossing of a critical threshold, or in other words, with transformation.

Tell us please, what treatment in an emergency is administered by ear?"....I met his gaze and I did not blink. "Words of comfort," I said to my father.

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.