Quotes by Abraham Verghese

About Abraham Verghese:

Abraham Verghese is a physician-author, Professor for the Theory and Practice of Medicine at Stanford University Medical School and Senior Associate Chair of the Department of Internal Medicine. He is also the author of three best-selling books, two memoirs and a novel. In 2011, he was elected to be a member of the Institute of Medicine.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Pray tell us, what's your favorite number?"... "Shiva jumped up to the board, uninvited, and wrote 10,213,223"... "And pray, why would this number interest us?" "It is the only number that describes itself when you read it, 'One zero, two ones, three...

Abraham Verghese

[American ambulance crews] salvaged people we'd never see in Missing, because no one would have tied to bring them to a hospital. Judging someone to be beyond help never crossed the minds of police, firemen, or doctors here.

Abraham Verghese

I welcomed my slavish existence as a surgical resident, the never-ending work, the cries that kept me in the present, the immersion in blood, pus, and tears -- the fluids in which one dissolved all traces of self. In working myself ragged, I felt int...

Abraham Verghese

The world turns on our every action, and our every omission, whether we know it or not." -Cutting for Stone

Abraham Verghese

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

When he recalls it in later years, he will wonder if he is distorting it, embellishing it, because each time he consciously recalls her, that forms a new memory, a new imprint to be stacked on top of the previous one. He fears that too much handling ...

Abraham Verghese

When a man is a mystery to himself you can hardly call him mysterious.

Abraham Verghese

No blade can puncture the human heart like the well-chosen words of a spiteful son.

Abraham Verghese

Yesterday misspent can't be recall'd Vanity makes beauty contemptible Wisdom is more valuable than riches.

Abraham Verghese

Life is full of signs. The trick is to know how to read them. Ghosh called this heuristics, a method for solving a problem for which no formula exists.

Abraham Verghese

To be around someone whose self-confidence is more than what our first glance led us to expect is seductive.

Abraham Verghese

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

Abraham Verghese

Do they listen?" He held up a finger. "Every year does," he said, ginning, "But that one makes it worthwhile. Even Jesus only did twelve. I try to get one a year.

Abraham Verghese

The master-word is Work, a little one, as I have said, but fraught with momentous sequences if you can but write it on the tablets of your hearts, and bind it upon your foreheads.

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 desire to be a physician had a lot to do with that sense of medicine as a ministry of healing, not just a science. And not even just a science and an art, but also a calling, also a ministry.

Abraham Verghese

For one who has an interest in the body as text, airports are treasure troves of information. It seems almost un-American to enjoy delays, and perhaps enjoy is not the best word, but certainly a delayed flight, if it does nothing else, allows one the...

Abraham Verghese

I still find the best way to understand a hospitalized patient whose care I am taking over is not by staring at the computer screen but by going to see the patient; it's only at the bedside that I can figure out what is important.

Abraham Verghese

Lest it sound as if I resent my day job, I have to say that my day job is the reason I write, and it has been the best thing for me as a writer.

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

Author Bio

  • NameAbraham Verghese
  • DescriptionPhysician, teacher, novelist
  • Born1955
  • CountryUnited States Of America; India
  • ProfessionWriter
  • WorksCutting For Stone
  • AwardsLambda Literary Award