Quotes from Abraham Verghese

Surgery was the most difficult thing I could imagine. And so I became a surgeon.

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

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.

The master-word is Work, a little one, as I have said, but fraught with momentous sequences if you can but write it on the tablets of your hearts, and bind it upon your foreheads.

Sooner or later, she must sit down to the meal of consequences

Success is not money! Success is you are fully loving what you are doing. That only is success!

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

her unhandsome, but beautiful friend of so many years...

To be listened to is healing

I realized that my father's absence is our slippers. In order to start to get rid of your slippers, you have to admit they are yours, and if you do, then they will get rid of themselves.

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

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.

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.

I am forced to render some order to the events of my life, to say it began here, and then because of this, that happened, and this is how the end connects to the beginning, and so here I am.

Doubt is a first cousin to faith, Ghosh. To have faith, you have to suspend your disbelief.

All possibilities resided within me, and they required me to be here. If I left, what would be left of me?

Roses would be annoying weeds if the blooms never withered and died. Beauty resides in the knowledge that it doesn't last.

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.

One operates in the now.

He invited me to a world that wasn't secret, but it was well hidden. You needed a guide. You had to know what to look for, but also how to look. You had to exert yourself to see this world." p 224

it was all I had, all I've ever had, the only currency, the only proof that I was alive. Memory." p 380

The world turns on our every action, and our every omission, whether we know it or not." p 533

All water is connected and only land and people are discontinuous. And his land is a place where he can no longer stay.

You see, young Dr. Marion, that's what makes us human. We always want more.