Quote

We come unbidden into this life, and if we are lucky we find a purpose beyond starvation, misery, and early death which, lest we forget, is the common lot.

Abraham Verghese

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Abraham Verghese
Age: 69
Born: 1955
Born: January 1
Physician
University Teacher
Writer
Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia
Find
Misery
Come
Early
Life
Lucky
Beyond
Forget
Purpose
Unbidden
Common
Starvation
Death
Lest

More quotes by Abraham Verghese

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There is a point when grief exceeds the human capacity to emote, and as a result one is strangely composed-
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You live it forward, but understand it backward.
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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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Students undergo a conversion in the third year of medical school - not pre-clinical to clinical, but pre-cynical to cynical.
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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.
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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.
Abraham Verghese
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There is that lovely feeling of one reader telling another, 'You must read this.' I've always wanted to write a book like that, with the sense that you are contributing to the discourse in middle America, a discourse that begins at a book club in a living room, but then spreads. That is meaningful to me.
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Patients know in a heartbeat if they're getting a clumsy exam.
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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.
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Not only our actions, but also our omissions, become our destiny.
Abraham Verghese
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Being the first born gives you great patience.
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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Make something beautiful of your life.
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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Ignorance was just as dynamic as knowledge, and it grew in the same proportion.
Abraham Verghese
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Be careful! Travel expands the mind and loosens the bowels.
Abraham Verghese
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In America, we have always taken it as an article of faith that we 'battle' cancer we attack it with knives, we poison it with chemotherapy or we blast it with radiation. If we are fortunate, we 'beat' the cancer. If not, we are posthumously praised for having 'succumbed after a long battle.'
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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We know the average American physician interrupts their patient in 14 seconds.
Abraham Verghese
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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.
Abraham Verghese