One operates in the now.

I've never bought this idea of taking a therapeutic distance. If I see a student or house staff cry, I take great faith in…

— Abraham Verghese

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

— Abraham Verghese

We come unbidden into this life, and if we are lucky we find a purpose beyond starvation, misery, and early death which, lest we…

— Abraham Verghese

I think America is really in denial about the degree to which residents, particularly foreign medical graduates, man the county hospitals of this country,…

— Abraham Verghese

“Do they listen?" He held up a finger. "Every year one does," he said, ginning, "But that one makes it worthwhile. Even Jesus only…

— Abraham Verghese

“It seems we humans never learn. And so we relearn the lesson every generation and then want to write epistles. We proselytize to our…

— Abraham Verghese

It was all I had, all I've ever had, the only currency, the only proof that I was alive. Memory.

— Abraham Verghese

“There it was, Hema must have thought; it was both the sorry and the thank-you that was so long overdue, and the funny thing…

— Abraham Verghese

“This is my life, I thought, as my taxi slogged through heavy traffic and inched through the tunnel to Logan Airport. I have excised…

— Abraham Verghese

“I could see that the almost mystical aura of this legendary surgeon -- the single-mindedness, the dedication, the skill -- was mere surface. The…

— Abraham Verghese

“As a child I'd longed for Thomas Stone or at least the idea of him. So many mornings I waited for him at the…

— Abraham Verghese

“The reader, knowing nothing about the ‘dark continent,’ filled in the blanks. Pictured Stone in a tent, kerosene lamp held up by a Hottentot…

— Abraham Verghese

“This was what growing up was about: hide the corpse, don't bare your heart, do make assumptions about the motives of others. They're certainly…

— Abraham Verghese

“And as for my father? No, he wouldn't ever walk through those gates; I now knew that. Whatever Thomas Stone had, wherever he was…

— Abraham Verghese

“... telling herself stories about herself in a singsong voice, creating her own mythology.”

— Abraham Verghese