Abraham Verghese Quotes

I see myself as a witness to humanity.

People who are sick, or who have been sick, or have come close to death have a lot to say - and they want you to hear it.

He is the best physician who is the most ingenious inspirer of hope.

In one way, I want to heal people.

I've never made a penny being a doctor, so that makes it not a job. My sense of a doctor is that one is a presence caring for health. So I'm never not a doctor. People call me from all over the world who are hurting, and I care for them. Chatting is what more people want than anything.

I've certainly had a lot of experiences in my life where I was much too self-centered.

Those who write about life, reflect about life. you see in others who you are.

I also believe that writing becomes worthwhile and vitalized only through a full and exciting life.

When we are well, we all have good advice for those who are ill.

I think health care is more about love than about most other things. If there isn't at the core of this two human beings who have agreed to be in a relationship where one is trying to help relieve the suffering of another, which is love, you can't get to the right answer here.

In my experience, psychotherapy at its best is like dual meditation - it's like a container in which you can be compassionate and mindful toward yourself.

Living is like tearing through a museum. Not until later do you really start absorbing what you saw, thinking about it, looking it up in a book, and remembering - because you can't take it in all at once.

All should take care of the sick

With age comes a greater understanding and a greater worldview.

The words come from here. From memories, from dreams, from people I've known. I'm always writing and reflecting on life. I want to suck it all in.

I had to have experience, you know what I mean? Because I've been doing this since I was 14... I couldn't write about anything at 14. I had to live some life. I definitely lived some life.

The man who has not suffered - what does he know anyway?

The power to guess the unseen from the seen, to trace the implication of things, to judge the whole piece by the pattern, the condition of feeling life, in general, so completely that you are well on your way to knowing any particular corner of it-this cluster of gifts may almost be said to constitute experience, and they occur in country and in town, and in the most differing stages of education.

While the sick man has life, there is hope.

Now you see how you are, the wisdom mixed in with all the scars.

Great pain, when it is honored from the heart, opens into great understanding.

The highest degree of a medicine is Love.

I write about what I know, what I live, what I observe.

I got a fortune cookie that said, "To remember is to understand." I have never forgotten it. A good judge remembers what it was like to be a lawyer. A good editor remembers being a writer. A good parent remembers what it was like to be a child.

A photograph is just a little, teeny-weeny, small piece of life. I feel like I see so much more than what I can actually get.