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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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Abraham Verghese
Age: 69
Born: 1955
Born: January 1
Physician
University Teacher
Writer
Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia
Teaching
Taught
Dies
Live

More quotes by Abraham Verghese

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How we treat the least of our brethren,... that's the measure of this country.
Abraham Verghese
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You live it forward, but understand it backward.
Abraham Verghese
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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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The bottom line: health care reform is about the patient, not about the physician.
Abraham Verghese
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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.
Abraham Verghese
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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.
Abraham Verghese
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What treatment in an emergency is administered by ear?
Abraham Verghese
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Make something beautiful of your life.
Abraham Verghese
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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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When I use the word 'healing', by that I mean that every disease has a physical element that we're very good at handling, but there's always a sense of the violation. 'Why me?' 'Why is my leg broken on the ski trip and not anyone else's?' And I think that medicine has done a terrible job of addressing that spiritual violation.
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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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.
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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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.
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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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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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.
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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Students undergo a conversion in the third year of medical school - not pre-clinical to clinical, but pre-cynical to cynical.
Abraham Verghese
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Geography is destiny.
Abraham Verghese