Abraham Verghese

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

— 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,…

— Abraham Verghese

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

— Abraham Verghese

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

— Abraham Verghese

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

— 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…

— Abraham Verghese

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

— Abraham Verghese

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

— 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…

— Abraham Verghese

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

— 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.…

— 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…

— Abraham Verghese

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

— Abraham Verghese

“B.C. sat back in his chair. “Whatever America needs, the world will supply. Cocaine? Colombia steps to the plate. Shortage of farmworkers,…

— Abraham Verghese

I was taking care of people my age who were dying. The constant feeling, hearing from them, was that life is transient…

— Abraham Verghese

If 'ecstasy' meant the sudden intrusion of the sacred into the ordinary, then it had just happened to me.

— Abraham Verghese

“sir.” “Very good. You can come and assist me in surgery if you like, Mr.…” “Stone, sir. Thomas Stone.” During the surgery…

— Abraham Verghese

“Life, too, is like that. You live it forward, but understand it backward." from CUTTING FOR STONE”

— Abraham Verghese

Lets take away the incentives to do 'to' patients and instead create incentives to do 'for' patients, to be 'with' patients. We…

— Abraham Verghese

That's the funny thing about America--the blessed thing. As many people as there are to hold you back, there are angels whose…

— Abraham Verghese

What we need in medical schools is not to teach empathy, as much as to preserve it - the process of learning…

— Abraham Verghese

“I chose the specialty of surgery because of Matron, that steady presence during my boyhood and adolescence. 'What is the hardest thing…

— Abraham Verghese

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