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I love to read poetry but I haven't written anything that I'm willing to show anybody.

Abraham Verghese

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Abraham Verghese
Age: 69
Born: 1955
Born: January 1
Physician
University Teacher
Writer
Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia
Anything
Haven
Love
Anybody
Poetry
Willing
Written
Show
Read
Shows
Havens

More quotes by 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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In writing, as in medicine, there are no short cuts. You need stamina.
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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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.
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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Not only our actions, but also our omissions, become our destiny.
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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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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Make something beautiful of your life.
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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What treatment in an emergency is administered by ear?
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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Ignorance was just as dynamic as knowledge, and it grew in the same proportion.
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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How we treat the least of our brethren,... that's the measure of this country.
Abraham Verghese
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God will judge us, Mr. Harris, by--by what we did to relieve the suffering of our fellow human beings. I don't think God cares what doctrine we embrace.
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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She died chasing greatness and never saw it each time it was in her hand, so she kept seeking it elsewhere, but never understood the work required to get it or to keep it.
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