25 Abraham Verghese Quotes for You to Enjoy

Abraham Verghese

Ethiopian Author

Born: 1955

Life Me Medicine Sense Time You

Related authors: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn C. S. Lewis Frederick Douglass George Orwell Helen Keller Henry David Thoreau Mark Twain Zig Ziglar

Rituals, anthropologists will tell us, are about transformation. The rituals we use for marriage, baptism or inaugurating a president are as elaborate as they are because we associate the ritual with a major life passage, the crossing of a critical threshold, or in other words, with transformation. Abraham Verghese

Life Marriage Words Will Threshold Transformation Other President Tell Critical About Crossing Ritual Rituals Major Because Passage In Other Words Baptism Elaborate Us Use Associate

The flip side of suicide is that it leaves a lingering question in the minds of the people who survived. It's like a cancer that's metastasized. The suicide is the cancer and the metastasis is all these people saying, Why? Why? Why? Abraham Verghese

Saying People Cancer Suicide Side Minds Like Leaves Question Lingering Survived Who Flip Why

I think we learn from medicine everywhere that it is, at its heart, a human endeavor, requiring good science but also a limitless curiosity and interest in your fellow human being, and that the physician-patient relationship is key; all else follows from it. Abraham Verghese

Literature is a beautiful way of keeping the imagination alive, of visiting worlds you would never have time to in your day-to-day life. It keeps you abreast of a wider spectrum of human activities. Abraham Verghese

Life Beautiful Time You Imagination Worlds Way Alive Visiting Would Abreast Never Day-To-Day Day-To-Day Life Beautiful Way Human Literature Your Activities Keeping Keeps Wider Spectrum

Students undergo a conversion in the third year of medical school - not pre-clinical to clinical, but pre-cynical to cynical. Abraham Verghese

School Year Cynical Students Undergo Clinical Conversion Medical Medical School Third

Lets take away the incentives to do 'to' patients and instead create incentives to do 'for' patients, to be 'with' patients. We don't need to do comparative effectiveness trials to see if that works; we can just ask patients. Abraham Verghese

Trials See Take Instead Effectiveness Just Patients Ask Create Incentives Works Comparative Lets Away Need

My deceased patients have taught me over the years to believe in the glass half full, to make good use of the time we have, to be generous - that was their lesson for the Uber-mind, and it was free. 'Do that,' they said, 'and then perhaps death shall have no dominion.' Abraham Verghese

Death Time Good Me Free Half Lesson Believe Shall Glass Generous Over Perhaps Half Full Make Said Years Dominion Deceased Taught Patients Then Use Full

Medicine may be the lens through which I see the world, but since I think of medicine as 'life +', a place where life is exaggerated and seen at its most vital and poignant, I'll be writing about life more than I will be writing about medicine. Abraham Verghese

Patients know in a heartbeat if they're getting a clumsy exam. Abraham Verghese

Exam Know Heartbeat Getting Patients Clumsy

As a young physician in the mid-'80s, caring for people who had contracted H.I.V., I lost two of my patients to suicide at a time when the virus was doing very little harm to them. I have always thought of them as having been killed by a metaphor, by the burden of secrecy and shame associated with the disease. Abraham Verghese

Time People Burden Thought Physician Lost Young Suicide Secrecy Caring Virus Having Shame Had Always Metaphor Doing Been Contracted Very Disease Patients Little Them Who Two Associated Harm

We're now able to show that the words of comfort trigger biological reactions which are the very things that you want, and you can use drugs to get there, or you can use words of comfort to get there, which would make your drugs so much more effective. Abraham Verghese

There are moments as a teacher when I'm conscious that I'm trotting out the same exact phrase my professor used with me years ago. It's an eerie feeling, as if my old mentor is not just in the room, but in my shoes, using me as his mouthpiece. Abraham Verghese

I think legislation needs to put an end to doctors profiting on businesses to which they can funnel patients - that is business, not medicine. If you try to call it medicine, then it is corruption. Without legislation, it will keep happening. Abraham Verghese

Modern society has evolved to the point where we counter the old-fashioned fatalism surrounding the word 'cancer' by embracing the idea of the Uber-mind - that our will possesses nearly supernatural powers. Abraham Verghese

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

Love Willing Poetry Written Read Anybody Anything Show

We have the sense that medical students come to medicine with a great capacity to understand the suffering of patients. And then by the end of the third year they completely lose that ability, partly because we teach them the specialized language of medicine. Abraham Verghese

I was taking care of people my age who were dying. The constant feeling, hearing from them, was that life is transient and can end very quickly, so don't postpone your dreams. Abraham Verghese

My writing flows out of my doctorhood. They are not separate things. They are one. I think the foremost connection between being a doctor and being a writer is the great privilege of having an intimate view of one's fellow humans, the privilege of being there and helping other people at their most vulnerable moments. Abraham Verghese

Great People Writing Doctor Think Other Intimate Out Having Writer Between Most Fellow Vulnerable Foremost Privilege Being Separate View Being There Helping Moments Connection Things Humans Flows

There is that lovely feeling of one reader telling another, 'You must read this.' I've always wanted to write a book like that, with the sense that you are contributing to the discourse in middle America, a discourse that begins at a book club in a living room, but then spreads. That is meaningful to me. Abraham Verghese

Me You Book Feeling Sense Club Living Book Club Telling Must Write Like Read Reader Another Always Spreads Discourse Begins Contributing America Middle Wanted Lovely Room Meaningful Then Living Room

Abraham Verghese Quotes

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