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The only way to know where you are is by where you have just been.

Abraham Verghese

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Abraham Verghese
Age: 69
Born: 1955
Born: January 1
Physician
University Teacher
Writer
Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia
Way

More quotes by 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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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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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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No blade can puncture the human heart like the well-chosen words of a spiteful son.
Abraham Verghese
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Literature is a beautiful way of keeping the imagination alive, of visiting worlds you would never have time to in your day-to-day life. It keeps you abreast of a wider spectrum of human activities.
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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The world turns on our every action, and our every omission, whether we know it or not.
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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Being the first born gives you great patience.
Abraham Verghese
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I'm a great believer in geography being destiny.
Abraham Verghese
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We know the average American physician interrupts their patient in 14 seconds.
Abraham Verghese
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We are all fixing what is broken. It is the task of a lifetime. We'll leave much unfinished for the next generation.
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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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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Life for the Italians was what it was, no more and no less, an interlude between meals
Abraham Verghese
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The crookedness of the serpent is still straight enough to slide through the snake hole.
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.
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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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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Geography is destiny.
Abraham Verghese