Writer Quotes by Abraham Verghese

9 Writer quotes by Abraham Verghese

All Writer quotes Abraham Verghese’s page

A physician‑author, Verghese blends observation with story. Nine brief reflections reveal how his clinical eye informs his writer’s perspective.

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In writing, as in medicine, there are no short cuts. You need stamina.

Abraham Verghese

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My advice for writers is to get a good day job. It takes the pressure off writing if you have a job…

Abraham Verghese

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I write by stealing time. The hours in the day have never felt as if they belonged to me. The greatest number…

Abraham Verghese

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Medicine, you see, is my first love; whether I write fiction or nonfiction, and even when it has nothing to do with…

Abraham Verghese

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Lest it sound as if I resent my day job, I have to say that my day job is the reason I…

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…

Abraham Verghese

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Don't Let Him Know is a rich, evocative and brilliantly told tale of family, of loyalties, and of love that must stay…

Abraham Verghese

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My writing flows out of my doctorhood. They are not separate things. They are one. I think the foremost connection between being…

Abraham Verghese

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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

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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

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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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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

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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

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“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

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“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

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

Abraham Verghese

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“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

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“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

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“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

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“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

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“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

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“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

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“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

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

Abraham Verghese

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