I was taking care of people my age who were dying. The constant feeling, hearing from them, was that life is transient… — Abraham Verghese Copy Share Image
The key to your happiness is to own your slippers, own who you are, own how you look, own your family, own… — Abraham Verghese Copy Share Image
There are moments as a teacher when I'm conscious that I'm trotting out the same exact phrase my professor used with me… — Abraham Verghese Copy Share Image
She felt the familiar calmness of an emergency, but she understood the falseness of that feeling, now that it was her life… — Abraham Verghese Copy Share Image
There is that lovely feeling of one reader telling another, 'You must read this.' I've always wanted to write a book like… — Abraham Verghese Copy Share Image
I was angry with myself because I still loved her, or at least I loved that dream of our togetherness. My feelings… — Abraham Verghese Copy Share Image
My sense is that the wonderful technology that we have to visualize the inside of the body often leaves physicians feeling that… — Abraham Verghese Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
I love to read poetry but I haven't written anything that I'm willing to show anybody. — Abraham Verghese Copy Share Image
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. I grew up and I found my purpose and it was to become a physician. My intent wasn't to save the world as much as to heal myself. Few doctors will… — Abraham Verghese Copy Share
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 Copy Share Image
“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 Copy Share Image
“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 Copy Share Image
It was all I had, all I've ever had, the only currency, the only proof that I was alive. Memory. — Abraham Verghese Copy Share Image
“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 Copy Share Image
“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 Copy Share Image
“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 Copy Share Image
“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 Copy Share Image
“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 Copy Share Image
