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

You can't show up at the bedside and then turn on your skills. You have to keep your game sharp all the time.

Abraham Verghese

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...

Abraham Verghese

I write by stealing time. The hours in the day have never felt as if they belonged to me. The greatest number has belonged to my day job as a physician and professor of medicine - eight to 12 hours, and even more in the early days.

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

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

My sense is that the wonderful technology that we have to visualize the inside of the body often leaves physicians feeling that the exam is a waste of time and so they may shortchange the ritual.

Abraham Verghese

Certainly when I got to medical school, I had role models of the kind of physicians I wanted to be. I had an uncle who, looking back, was probably not the most-educated physician around, but he carried it off so well.

Abraham Verghese

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

Abraham Verghese

I think America is really in denial about the degree to which residents, particularly foreign medical graduates, man the county hospitals of this country, and but for their services, I'm not sure how exactly we could manage.

Abraham Verghese

There's something universal about illness... Whether you like it, at some level all patients are saying, 'Daddy, Mommy, help me, tell me it's going to be alright.'

Abraham Verghese

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

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

Abraham Verghese

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

I'm the first to admit that the resolution of a hand feeling the belly doesn't compare with the resolution of a CAT scan scanning the belly, but only my hand can say that it hurts at this spot and not at this spot. Only my hand can say that.

Abraham Verghese

So I consider myself a dog person. Kind of. Had dogs when I was a kid, but my parents would never have dreamed of having them in the house.

Abraham Verghese

I joke, but only half joke, that if you show up in an American hospital missing a finger, no one will believe you until they get a CAT scan, MRI and orthopedic consult.

Abraham Verghese

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

Abraham Verghese

When you have a natural genetic tan developed over centuries and many generations, the idea of soaking up rays by the pool has never made sense.

Abraham Verghese

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 effectiv...

Abraham Verghese

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 l...

Abraham Verghese

God will judge us by what we did to relieve the suffering of our fellow human beings. I don't think God cares what doctrine we embrace.

Abraham Verghese

Author Bio

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