Abraham Verghese
Abraham Verghese
Abraham Vergheseis 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...
NationalityEthiopian
ProfessionAuthor
CountryEthiopia
broken tasks generations
According to Shiva, life is in the end about fixing holes. Shiva didn't speak in metaphors. fixing holes is precisely what he did. Still, it's an apt metaphor for our profession. But there's another kind of hole, and that is the wound that divides family. Sometimes this wound occurs at the moment of birth, sometimes it happens later. We are all fixing what is broken. It is the task of a lifetime. We'll leave much unfinished for the next generation.
book men clothes
What did it say when a man had fewer clothes than books?
men mysterious mystery
When a man is a mystery to himself you can hardly call him mysterious.
way where-you-are knows
The only way to know where you are is by where you have just been.
giving firsts born
Being the first born gives you great patience.
years medicine suffering
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.
dream people feelings
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.
snakes slides enough
The crookedness of the serpent is still straight enough to slide through the snake hole.
suicide cancer people
The flip side of suicide is that it leaves a lingering question in the minds of the people who survived. Its like a cancer thats metastasized. The suicide is the cancer and the metastasis is all these people saying, Why? Why? Why?
blessed thinking america
I think we can see how blessed we are in America to have access to the kind of health care we do if we are insured, and even if uninsured, how there is a safety net. Now, as to the problem of how much health care costs and how we reform health care ... it is another story altogether.
destiny geography believer
I'm a great believer in geography being destiny.
beautiful imagination alive
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.
opportunity airports delay
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 opportunity to make prolonged observations about one's fellow travelers.
ignorance grew proportion
Ignorance was just as dynamic as knowledge, and it grew in the same proportion.