We come unbidden into this life, and if we are lucky we find a purpose beyond starvation, misery, and early death which,… — Abraham Verghese Copy Share Image
Tell us please, what treatment in an emergency is administered by ear?"....I met his gaze and I did not blink. "Words of… — Abraham Verghese Copy Share Image
“Surely you couldn't be a good doctor and a terrible human being---surely the laws of man, if not God, didn't allow it.” — Abraham Verghese Copy Share Image
“My father, for whose skills as a surgeon I have the deepest respect, says, "The operation with the best outcome is the… — Abraham Verghese Copy Share Image
The most important innovation in medicine to come in the next 10 years: the power of the human hand. — Abraham Verghese Copy Share Image
I think legislation needs to put an end to doctors profiting on businesses to which they can funnel patients - that is… — Abraham Verghese Copy Share Image
“The world turns on our every action, and our every omission, whether we know it or not." -Cutting for Stone” — Abraham Verghese Copy Share Image
“Luther did not believe that HIV was killing him. He believed that our inability to treat the symptoms that bothered him, our… — Abraham Verghese Copy Share Image
My writing flows out of my doctorhood. They are not separate things. They are one. I think the foremost connection between being… — Abraham Verghese Copy Share Image
Certainly when I got to medical school, I had role models of the kind of physicians I wanted to be. I had… — Abraham Verghese Copy Share Image
The bottom line: health care reform is about the patient, not about the physician. — Abraham Verghese Copy Share Image
We have the sense that medical students come to medicine with a great capacity to understand the suffering of patients. And then… — 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
We know the average American physician interrupts their patient in 14 seconds. — Abraham Verghese Copy Share Image
Medicine may be the lens through which I see the world, but since I think of medicine as 'life +', a place… — Abraham Verghese Copy Share Image
I think we learn from medicine everywhere that it is, at its heart, a human endeavor, requiring good science but also a… — Abraham Verghese Copy Share Image
I write by stealing time. The hours in the day have never felt as if they belonged to me. The greatest number… — Abraham Verghese Copy Share Image
My desire to be a physician had a lot to do with that sense of medicine as a ministry of healing, not… — Abraham Verghese Copy Share Image
In an emergency, what treatment is given by ear? Words of Comfort. — Abraham Verghese Copy Share Image
“I welcomed my slavish existence as a surgical resident, the never-ending work, the cries that kept me in the present, the immersion… — Abraham Verghese Copy Share Image
A beautiful literary collection that tells of today's country doctor, somewhat removed from our romantic black-bag image of days gone by, but… — Abraham Verghese Copy Share Image
When I use the word 'healing,' by that I mean that every disease has a physical element that we're very good at… — Abraham Verghese Copy Share Image
In writing, as in medicine, there are no short cuts. You need stamina. — Abraham Verghese Copy Share Image
Medicine, you see, is my first love; whether I write fiction or nonfiction, and even when it has nothing to do with… — 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… — Abraham Verghese Copy Share Image
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
