Ethiopian - Author | 1955 -
Though I am fascinated by knowledge, I am even more fascinated by wisdom.
Abraham Verghese
WisdomKnowledgeI AmMoreEvenAm
Medicine may be the lens through which I see the world, but since I think of medicine as 'life +', a place where life is exaggerated and seen at its most vital and poignant, I'll be writing about life more than I will be writing about medicine.
LifeWritingWorldMedicineThink
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.
CreateTrialsAskNeedSeeTake
You can't show up at the bedside and then turn on your skills. You have to keep your game sharp all the time.
TimeGameYouSkillsTurnUp
I'm a proud American - becoming a citizen in 1988 was one of the most profoundly moving occasions in my life; I'm a former Texan and a recent Californian.
LifeMovingProudAmericanMy Life
In America, we have always taken it as an article of faith that we 'battle' cancer; we attack it with knives, we poison it with chemotherapy or we blast it with radiation. If we are fortunate, we 'beat' the cancer. If not, we are posthumously praised for having 'succumbed after a long battle.'
FaithBattleAmericaLongBeat
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.
SocietyWillPointCancerModern
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 the burden of secrecy and shame associated with the disease.
TimeCaringPeopleThoughtSuicide
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.'
GoodTimeDeathMeFreeBelieve
My advice for writers is to get a good day job. It takes the pressure off writing if you have a job that pays the bills.
GoodDayJobGood DayWritingYou
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.
BestI AmCareFindI CanImportant
I love to read poetry but I haven't written anything that I'm willing to show anybody.
LovePoetryAnythingShowWilling
Copyright © 2024 QuotesDict Abraham Verghese quotes