Medicine, you see, is my first love; whether I write fiction or nonfiction, and even when it has nothing to do with medicine, it's still about medicine. After all, what is medicine but life plus? So I write about life.
Interpretation
The quote expresses the deep connection between the author's love for medicine and their writing.
In this quote, Abraham Verghese articulates how his passion for medicine permeates all aspects of his writing. He suggests that medicine is not only a profession but also a lens through which he views and interprets life. By stating that 'what is medicine but life plus?', he implies that his experiences in medicine enrich his understanding of life, making his writing inherently linked to it.
In practice
During a keynote speech on the importance of passion in professional life.
The flip side of suicide is that it leaves a lingering question in the minds of the people who survived. It's like a cancer that's metastasized. The suicide is the cancer and the metastasis is all these people saying, Why? Why? Why?
We're losing a ritual. We're losing a ritual that I believe is transformative, transcendent, and is at the heart of the patient-physician relationship.
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.
It was all I had, all I've ever had, the only currency, the only proof that I was alive. Memory.
My VIP patients often regret so many things on their deathbeds. They regret the bitterness they'll leave in people's hearts. They realize the no money, no church service, no eulogy, no funeral procession no matter how elaborate, can remove the legacy of a mean spirit.
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 can play the 'Gloria'? No, not Bach's 'Gloria.' Yours! Your 'Gloria' lives within you. The greatest sin is not finding it, ignoring what God made possible in you.
Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.
The highest form of love is the love that allows for intimacy without the annihilation of difference.
Maybe love was superstition, a prayer we said to keep the truth of loneliness at bay. I tilted my head back. The stars looked like they were close together, when really they were millions of miles apart. In the end, maybe love just meant longing for something impossibly bright and forever out of reach.
Hot hate is twin brother to hot love.
Grace is love that seeks you out when you have nothing to give in return. Grace is love coming at you that has nothing to do with you. Grace is being loved when you are unlovable.
You can be instantly scared. You can be instantly happy. So why can't you be instantly romantically in love? I think when it happens, it's because you are ready to fall in love.
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