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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.

Abraham Verghese

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Abraham Verghese
Age: 69
Born: 1955
Born: January 1
Physician
University Teacher
Writer
Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia
Together
Holes
Believe
Lasts
Empties
Last
Swirl
Future
Swirls
Universe
Drain
Black
Smack
Around
Drains
Past
Nothingness

More quotes by Abraham Verghese

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Pray tell us, what's your favorite number?
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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.
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The only way to know where you are is by where you have just been.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Geography is destiny.
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She felt the familiar calmness of an emergency, but she understood the falseness of that feeling, now that it was her life at stake.
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It was all I had, all I've ever had, the only currency, the only proof that I was alive. Memory.
Abraham Verghese
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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. Why settle for 'Three Blind Mice' when you can can play the 'Gloria'? No, not Bach's 'Gloria.' Yours! Your 'Gloria' lives within you. The greatest sin is not finding it, ignoring what God made possible in you.
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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.
Abraham Verghese
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Wasn't that the definition of home? Not where you are from, but where you are wanted
Abraham Verghese
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By visiting patients in their home, by helping them come to terms with their illness, I could heal when I could not cure.
Abraham Verghese
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Though I am fascinated by knowledge, I am even more fascinated by wisdom.
Abraham Verghese
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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.
Abraham Verghese
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In an emergency, what treatment is given by ear? Words of Comfort.
Abraham Verghese
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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.
Abraham Verghese
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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.
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Patients know in a heartbeat if they're getting a clumsy exam.
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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.
Abraham Verghese