Quote

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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Abraham Verghese
Age: 69
Born: 1955
Born: January 1
Physician
University Teacher
Writer
Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia
Head
Pronouncement
Understand
Pillow
Another
Settled
Paradise
Precious
Inevitable
Meant
Gift
Uneventful

More quotes by Abraham Verghese

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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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A rich man's faults are covered with money, but a surgeon's faults are covered with earth.
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
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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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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.
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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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.
Abraham Verghese
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We know the average American physician interrupts their patient in 14 seconds.
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-
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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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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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
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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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She felt the familiar calmness of an emergency, but she understood the falseness of that feeling, now that it was her life at stake.
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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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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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
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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.
Abraham Verghese
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The most important innovation in medicine to come in the next 10 years: the power of the human hand.
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