Quotes from Abraham Verghese

Don't leave the instrument sitting in its case, my son. Play! Leave no part of your instrument unexplored. Why settle for 'Three Blind Mice' when you can play the 'Gloria'?

Apparently, Marx said that religion was the opium of the masses. It kept the oppressed from complaining or trying to change things.

happened has happened, be will be

I don't think you can be a physician and not see yourself reflected in your patient's illness. How would I deal with the kind of news I'd given Mr. Walters?

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

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.

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.

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

The trajectory of her scholastic progress to that point was spectacular and unprecedented, a model for all youth; it was also an invitation to fate to stick out a foot and trip her.

The reader, knowing nothing about the 'dark continent,' filled in the blanks. Pictured Stone in a tent, kerosene lamp held up by a Hottentot providing the only light, elephants stampeding outside while the good doctor recited Cicero and excised part of himself as blithely as if he were cutting for stone on the body of another.

Because Marion, you are an instrument of God. Don't leave the instrument sitting in its case, my son. Play! Leave no part of your instrument unexplored. Why settle for 'Three Blind Mice' when you can play the 'Gloria'?... Your 'Gloria' lives within you. The greatest sin is not finding it, ignoring what God made possible in you.

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 under your wheel.

I could see that the almost mystical aura of this legendary surgeon -- the single-mindedness, the dedication, the skill -- was mere surface. The surgical persona was something he had crafter to protect himself. But what he had created was a prison. Anytime he strayed from the professional to the personal, he knew what to expect: pain.

Yesterday misspent can't be recall'd

She had 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.

I hope one day you see this as clearly as I did in Kerchele. The key to your happiness is to won your slippers, own who you are, own how you look, own your family, own the talents you have, and own to 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.

He wrote in the fly leaf: Nam et ipsa scientia potestas est! "That means 'Knowledge is power!' Oh, I do believe that, Marion.

Life, too, is like that. You live it forward, but understand it backward.

OUr teachers at LT&C had their A levels and the odd teaching certificate. It is astonishing how a black crepe robe worn over a coat or blouse gives a Cockney punter or a Covent Garden flower girl the gravitas of an Oxford don. Accent be damned in Africa, as long as it's foreign and you have the right skin colour.

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

It seems we humans never learn. And so we relearn the lesson every generation and then want to write epistles. We proselytize to our friends and shake them by the shoulders and tell them, "Seize the day! What matters is THIS moment!

What neither the reader nor Stone would accept was that his self-amputation was as much and act of conceit as it was an act of heroism" p 61

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.

That's the funny thing about America - the blessed thing. As many people as there are to hold you back, there are angels whose humanity makes up for all the others." p 405