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The world turns on our every action, and our every omission, whether we know it or not.

Abraham Verghese

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Abraham Verghese
Age: 70
Born: 1955
Born: January 1
Physician
University Teacher
Writer
Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia
Turns
Whether
Action
Every
World
Omission

More quotes by Abraham Verghese

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He had so many ways of climbing into the tree house in his head, escaping the madness below, and pulling the ladder up behind him.
Abraham Verghese
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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
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For one who has an interest in the body as text, airports are treasure troves of information. It seems almost un-American to enjoy delays, and perhaps enjoy is not the best word, but certainly a delayed flight, if it does nothing else, allows one the opportunity to make prolonged observations about one's fellow travelers.
Abraham Verghese
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In an emergency, what treatment is given by ear? Words of Comfort.
Abraham Verghese
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Yesterday misspent can't be recall'd Vanity makes beauty contemptible Wisdom is more valuable than riches.
Abraham Verghese
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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.
Abraham Verghese
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The crookedness of the serpent is still straight enough to slide through the snake hole.
Abraham Verghese
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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.
Abraham Verghese
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He was teaching me how to die, just as he'd taught me how to live.
Abraham Verghese
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To be around someone whose self-confidence is more than what our first glance led us to expect is seductive.
Abraham Verghese
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Patients know in a heartbeat if they're getting a clumsy exam.
Abraham Verghese
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If 'ecstasy' meant the sudden intrusion of the sacred into the ordinary, then it had just happened to me.
Abraham Verghese
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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.
Abraham Verghese
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Geography is destiny.
Abraham Verghese
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Life for the Italians was what it was, no more and no less, an interlude between meals
Abraham Verghese
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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. I've had my share of angels.
Abraham Verghese
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Pray tell us, what's your favorite number?... Shiva jumped up to the board, uninvited, and wrote 10,213,223... 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 Verghese
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Certainly when I got to medical school, I had role models of the kind of physicians I wanted to be. I had an uncle who, looking back, was probably not the most-educated physician around but he carried it off so well.
Abraham Verghese
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I'm a great believer in geography being destiny.
Abraham Verghese
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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