Verghese Quotes & Sayings

I stepped out to the lawn. I remember the air that night, and how it was so brisk that it could revive the dead. The fragrance of eucalyptus stoking a home fire, the smell of wet grass, of dung fuel, of tobacco, of swamp air, and the perfume of hundreds of roses
this was the scent of Missing. No, it was the scent of a continent. — Abraham Verghese

She died chasing greatness and never saw it each time it was in her hand, so she kept seeking it elsewhere, but never understood the work required to get it or to keep it. — Abraham Verghese

In an emergency, what treatment is given by ear? Words of Comfort. — 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

I'm so sorry,' Stone said. I don't know whether he was speaking to me, or Ghosh, or the universe. It wasn't enough, but it was about time. — Abraham Verghese

When I use the word 'healing,' by that I mean that every disease has a physical element that we're very good at handling, but there's always a sense of the violation. 'Why me?' 'Why is my leg broken on the ski trip and not anyone else's?' And I think that medicine has done a terrible job of addressing that spiritual violation. — Abraham Verghese

Hema thought of Shiva, her personal deity, and how the only sensible response to the madness of life ... was to cultivate a kind of madness within, to perform the mad dance of Shiva, ... to rock and sway and flap six arms and six legs to an inner tune. Hema moved gently ... she danced as if her minimalist gestures were shorthand for a much larger, fuller, reckless dance, one that held the whole world together, kept it from extinction. — 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 at the gates of Missing. I saw that vigil now as necessary, a prerequisite for my insides to harden and cure just like the willow of a cricket bat must cure to be ready for a lifetime of knocks. That was the lesson at Missing's gates: the world does not owe you and neither does your father. — Abraham Verghese

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

You know what's given me the greatest pleasure in my life? It's been our bungalow, the normalcy of it, the ordinariness of my waking, Almaz rattling in the kitchen, my work, my classes, my rounds with the senior students. Seeing you and Shiva at dinner, then going to sleep with my wife ... I want my days to be that way. — Abraham Verghese

people who have made India awesome aren't all politicians. Most of the people that did this are not from the government. Whether it is entrepreneurs like J.R.D. Tata and N.R. Narayana Murthy, sportspersons like Sachin Tendulkar or musicians like A.R. Rahman, people from all walks of life have helped improve our nation. Not just celebrities, but E. Sreedharan, responsible for the Delhi Metro, and Dr Verghese Kurien, who created the Amul revolution, were all ordinary people doing their work extraordinarily well. Mahatma Gandhi and Swami Vivekananda, two of the most influential figures in India's history, never held political office. Aim to be one of those people who made India awesome. — Chetan Bhagat

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

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. — Abraham Verghese

Ghosh trusted me to do whatever it is I would choose to do. That, too, is love. He'd been dead more than a quarter century and he was still teaching me about the trust that comes only from true love. — 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

Don't know how many minutes I stood there. It was precisely the comfort she seemed to need this night. If only she had known to ask, or I to give, we could've done away with the blindfold ... Thank God for the blindfold. She — Abraham Verghese

She found her greatness, at last, found it in her suffering. Once you have greatness, who needs anything else? — Abraham Verghese

Whatever America needs, the world will supply. Cocaine? Colombia steps to the plate. Shortage of farmworkers, corn detasselers? Thank God for Mexico. Baseball players? Viva Dominica. Need more interns? India, Philippines zindabad!" I — 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 faith in that. That's a great person; they're going to be a great doctor. — Abraham Verghese

I believe that as the universe empties into nothingness, past and future will smack together in the last swirl around the drain. I believe this is how Thomas Stone materialized in my life. If that's not the explanation, then I must invoke a disinterested God who leaves us to our own devices, neither causing nor preventing tornadoes or pestilence, but a God who will now and then stick his thumb on the spinning wheel so that a father who put a continent between himself and his sons should find himself in the same room as one of them. — Abraham Verghese

We know the average American physician interrupts their patient in 14 seconds. — Abraham Verghese

I was to learn yet another valuable but sad lesson: that the technical advice of 'experts' is all too often dictated by the economic interests of the advanced countries and not by the needs or ground realities in developing countries. Without exception, technical experts from England and New Zealand told us that buffalo milk could not be converted to milk powder. We showed them how it could be done. — Verghese Kurien

As far as multinationals are concerned, money always was and always will be their only God. I once told the Chairman of Nestle during a meeting, 'I've been in this game for fifty years and I know your modus operandi well. Your problem is that in India you're running into people who know more about dairying than you will ever know. Your problem is that there is a Kurien here and you are unable to find out what his price is, so you're unable to buy him out, which is what you'd normally do. But you can't buy me out; you can't buy off Amul. Keep in mind that all your usual, unscrupulous procedures that bring you success everywhere else will not work here. — Verghese Kurien

Do the right thing, put up with unfairness, selfishness, stay true to yourself ... one day it all works out. — Abraham Verghese

He had so many ways of climbing into the tree house in his head, escaping the madness below, and pulling the ladder up behind him ... — Abraham Verghese

I'll never forget the stillness, the hesitation, and a trace of something I'd never before seen on Ghosh's face: cunning. Then it gave in to resignation and a faraway look. For a moment I saw the world through his eyes, his intellect, his sweeping vision ... a vision that recapitulated our birth and looked to the future, looked past his life to the end of mine and beyond. And then and only then did it settle, gather, and focus, on the now, on a moment when the love was so palpable between father and son that the thought that it might end, and this memory be its only legacy, was unacceptable. — Abraham Verghese

How beautiful and horrible life is, Hema thought; too horrible to simply call tragic. Life is worse than tragic. p 108 — Abraham Verghese

Call me old-fashioned," Deepak said, "but I've always believed that hard work pays off. My version of the Beatitudes. Do the right thing, put up with unfairness, selfishness, stay true to yourself ... one day it all works out. Of course, I don't know that people who wronged you suffer or get their just deserts. I don't think it works that way. But I do think that one day you get your reward. — Abraham Verghese

In working myself ragged, I felt integrated, I felt American, and I rarely had time to think of home. — Abraham Verghese

Be ready. Be seated. See what courage sounds like. See how brave it is to reveal yourself in this way. But above all, see what it is to still live, to profoundly influence the lives of others after you are gone, by your words. — Abraham Verghese

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

This was what growing up was about: hide the corpse, don't bare your heart, do make assumptions about the motives of others. They're certainly doing all these things to you. — Abraham Verghese

Sisters of the Nigrizia — Abraham Verghese

Sometimes, if you think you're sick, you will be. — Abraham Verghese

Telling herself stories about herself in a singsong voice, creating her own mythology. — Abraham Verghese

It was all I had, all I've ever had, the only currency, the only proof that I was alive.
Memory. p 380 — 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 opportunity to make prolonged observations about one's fellow travelers. — Abraham Verghese

All my ghosts had vanished; the retribution that they sought had been exacted. I had nothing more to give, and nothing to fear. — Abraham Verghese

I joke, but I only half joke, that if you come to one of our hospitals missing a limb, no one will believe you till they get a CAT scan, MRI, or orthopedic consult. — Abraham Verghese

The crookedness of the serpent is still straight enough to slide through the snake hole. — Abraham Verghese

it the bloody-brinjal-and-bugger-all. Which is — Abraham Verghese

This is my life, I thought ... I have excised the cancer from my past, cut it out; I have crossed the high plains, descended into the desert, traversed oceans, and planted my feet in new soil; I have been the apprentice, paid my dues, and have just become master of my ship. But when I look down, why do I see the ancient, tarred, mud-stained slippers that I buried at the start of the journey still stuck to my feet? — Abraham Verghese

The key to your happiness is to own your slippers, own who you are, own how you look, own your family, own the talents you have, and own the ones you don't. If you keep saying your slippers aren't yours, then you'll die searching, you'll die bitter, always feeling you were promised more. Not only our actions, but also our omissions, become our destiny. — Abraham Verghese

When you win, you often lose, that's just a fact. There's no currency to straighten a warped spirit, or open a closed heart, a selfish heart ... — Abraham Verghese

Interestingly, at one stage, Glaxo approached us, willing to give a manufacturing contract for its baby food to Amul. I said we could consider it on the condition that it would carry the Amul brand name. This so incensed the Glaxo boss that he is said to have declared: 'Amul will never be able to sell its brand of baby food and when their tins begin rotting on the shelves, I will have them collected and thrown into the Arabian Sea!' Such was the arrogance of multinationals. — Verghese Kurien

Wasn't that the definition of home? Not where you are from, but where you are wanted — 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

Impending death had a way of unexpectedly unearthing the past so that it came together with the present in an unholy coupling. — 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 integrated ... — 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

I was thinking back to my own childhood in Ethiopia. The church services of our small Christian Indian community were interminable and conducted in an ancient language, Syriac. My parents and the other Indian Christians in Ethiopia knew the liturgy by heart, it was what they had grown up with. And to stand together in an Ethiopian church that they rented, to worship together in a language that could be traced to St. Thomas and to Jerusalem, was an affirmation of who they were, a connection to a corner of India so far away from Africa. — Abraham Verghese

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

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

Now I saw this categorizing of my freezer food as a sign of the true chaos in my head. — 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 felt sorry that he had suffered so long in the hospital, sorry that even in his last minutes our mindless technology had so rudely interrupted his transition — Abraham Verghese

What treatment in an emergency is administered by ear? — Abraham Verghese

Be careful! Travel expands the mind and loosens the bowels. — Abraham Verghese

Don't Let Him Know is a rich, evocative and brilliantly told tale of family, of loyalties, and of love that must stay secret. Sandip Roy has broken new ground in this tale of the modern Indian family. A lovely read — Abraham Verghese

You must always remember that you are Kurien's second wife. His first wife is the dairy. Don't ever forget that and don't make yourself miserable by being jealous. And never, never try to snatch your husband away from his first wife. — Verghese Kurien

So Medicare decided to pay hospitals like ours for internship and
residency training programs, get it? It's a win-win, as they say - the hospital
gets patients cared for by interns and residents around the clock,people like us who live on site, and whose stipend is a bloody fraction of what the hospital would pay full-time physicians. And Medicare delivers health care to the poor. — Abraham Verghese

the clerk in the ministry to correct this, he pulled out his original typescript. "See for yourself, madam. Quod erat demonstrandum it is Missing," he said, as if he'd proved Pythagoras's theorem, the sun's central position in the solar system, the roundness of the — Abraham Verghese

It was the very moment when I thought, At last, she is going to stay, but in fact it was her good-bye. — Abraham Verghese

The tide had turned, and the worst possible thing had happened: my heroes had become the "bad guys," and one didn't dare say otherwise. — Abraham Verghese

All sons should write down every word of what their fathers have to say to them. — 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

I was temperamentally better suited to a cognitive discipline, to an introspective field - internal medicine, or perhaps psychiatry. The sight of the operating theater made me sweat. The idea of holding a scalpel caused coils to form in my belly. (It still does.) Surgery was the most difficult thing I could imagine.
And so I became a surgeon. — 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

A beautiful literary collection that tells of today's country doctor, somewhat removed from our romantic black-bag image of days gone by, but still fulfilling an essential need in caring for spread-out populations. At times, with today's advances in technology, medicine in rural America looks very like it does in America's cities, but the variety of practices is enormous. The Country Doctor Revisited captures the trials and tribulations of medicine, but also the satisfaction and the extraordinary rewards that come to those who embrace such a practice. — Abraham Verghese

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

No money, no church service, no eulogy,no funeral procession no matter how elaborate, can remove the legacy of a mean spirit. p 354 — Abraham Verghese

I was angry with myself because I still loved her, or at least I loved that dream of our togetherness. My feelings were unreasonable, irrational, and I couldn't change them. That hurt. — 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

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

No matter what ailed you, you went to see the barber surgeon who wound up cupping you, bleeding you, purging you. And, oh yes, if you wanted, he would give you a haircut and pull your tooth while he was at it. — 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

We come unbidden into this life, and if we are lucky we find a purpose beyond starvation, misery, and early death which, lest we forget, is the common lot. I grew up and I found my purpose and it was to become a physician. My intent wasn't to save the world as much as to heal myself. Few doctors will admit this, certainly not young ones, but subconsciously, in entering the profession, we must believe that ministering to others will heal our woundedness. And it can. but it can also deepen the wound. — 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

I realized that I could have done more for him if I had been in his house. I would have pushed morphine--large doses. Morphine disconnects the head from the body, makes the isthmus of a neck vanish and diminishes the awareness of suffering. It is like a magic trick: the head on the pillow, at peace, while the chest toils away. — Abraham Verghese

A rich man's faults are covered with money, but a surgeon's faults are covered with earth. — Abraham Verghese

My beeper, silent till then, went off. In answering its summons, I slipped the yoke back around my neck; indeed, I welcomed my slavish existence as a surgical resident, the never-ending work, the crises that kept me in the present, the immersion in blood, pus, and tears - the fluids in which one dissolved all traces of self. — Abraham Verghese

Love so strong, without ebb and flow or crests and troughs, indeed lacking any sort of motion so that it had become invisible to him these seven years, part of the order of things outside his head which he had taken for granted. — Abraham Verghese

Your tits are bigger," Shiva said.
"SHIVA!" Hema and Ghosh said at the same time.
"Sorry," he said, surprised by their reaction. "I meant her breasts are bigger," he said.
"SHIVA! That isn't the sort of thing you say to a woman," Hema said.
"I can't say it to a man," Shiva said, looking impatient. — Abraham Verghese

I believe in black holes. I believe that as the universe empties into nothingness, past and future will smack together in the last swirl around the drain. — Abraham Verghese

Life, too, is like that. You live it forward, but understand it backward. It is only when you stop and look to the rear that you see the corpse caught under your wheel. — Abraham Verghese

In America, my initial impression was that death or the possibility of it always seemed to come as a surprise, as if we took it for granted that we were immortal, and that death was just an option. — Abraham Verghese

I am convinced that one can buy in Harrods of London a kit that allows an enterprising Englishman to create a British school anywhere in the third world. It comes with black robes, preprinted report cards for Michaelmas, Lent, and Easter terms, as well as hymnals, Prefect Badges, and a syllabus. Assembly required. — Abraham Verghese

Any sensible government must learn to unleash the energy of its people and get them to perform instead of trying to get a bureaucracy to perform. — Verghese Kurien

You" or "Your" never meant one of us. When we replied to a question, no one cared which of us had spoken; an answer from one was an answer for The Twins. — Abraham Verghese

People change, you know. When you leave your country, you are like a plant taken out of soil. Some people turn hard, they can't flower again. — Abraham Verghese

How we treat the least of our brethren, how we treat the peasant suffering with volvulus, that's the measure of this country. Not our fighter planes or tanks, — Abraham Verghese

A good surgeon needs courage for which a good pair of balls is a prerequisite, — Abraham Verghese

I saw that vigil now as necessary, a prerequisite for my insides to harden and cure just like the willow of a cricket bat must cure to be ready for a lifetime of knocks. — Abraham Verghese

A man is only as rich as the number of children he fathers. After all, what else do we leave behind in this world ... — Abraham Verghese

The only way to know where you are is by where you have just been. — Abraham Verghese

The poorest in America are the sickets. Poor people can't afford preventive care or insurance. The poor don't see doctors. They show up at our doorstep when things are advanced. — Abraham Verghese

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

The ambulance crews brought the victims to us before the tires on the wreck stopped spinning. They salvaged people we'd never see in Missing, because no one would have tried to bring them to a hospital. Judging someone to be beyond help never crossed the minds of police, firemen, or doctors here. A — Abraham Verghese

You live it forward, but understand it backward. — Abraham Verghese

God will judge us, Mr. Harris, by" - her voice broke as she thought of Sister Mary Joseph Praise - "by what we did to relieve the suffering of our fellow human beings. I don't think God cares what doctrine we embrace." The — Abraham Verghese