Quotes from Abraham Verghese

The Model T's loose suspension makes them sway in unison, a rhythm conducive to confession.

Digby is struck by the contrast: an enclave for Anglo-Indians that excludes natives, yet whose inhabitants are themselves excluded by the ruling race with whom they align. But then, he's in the same spot. Digby Kilgour: oppressed in Glasgow; oppressor here. The thought depresses him.

No one but "Jigiby Doctor," who gave her the miraculous drops, may operate.

What can success look like now? Janakiram has the answer. "Success is not money! Success is you are fully loving what you are doing. That only is success!

I've canceled your clinic on Tuesday. We're meeting Ravi. Dr. V. V. Ravichandran at General Hospital. He's brilliant . . . The first Indian full professor in surgery at the Madras Medical College. When the governor needed surgery, his wife quietly sent for Ravi. Everyone knows he's the best, but on top of that he's a lovely man and a good teacher. I knew him when we were posted together in Tanjore.

Owen and Jennifer Tuttleberry are Anglo-Indian friends of Honorine's, and now of Digby's—Jennifer works as a switchboard operator, while her husband is a locomotive driver. Owen spends his days standing on the footplate of Bessie, his great hissing "dame," her plethora of dials and levers before him, a little boy whose dream has come true.

But then my poor sons would have to be educated alongside Anglo-Indians. They'd have a chee-chee accent like their mother and be called 'fifteen annas' behind their backs, even if they were not Anglo-Indians." There were sixteen annas to a rupee, and to be a Celeste was to be one short.

The mistake, Digby, of choosing to see more in your future mate than the evidence has already suggested.

I am so behind that yesterday catches up with tomorrow.

One shouldn't just hope to be treated well: one must insist on it.

Success is you are fully loving what you are doing. That only is success!

He thinks of his loving sister, and the narrow, confined life she lived that never seemed that way to her, and how much she enriched their lives. He was her "precious baby," never aging for her, just as she never aged. Strangers might feel sorry for Baby Mol, but if they'd understood how happy she was, how fully she lived in the present, inhabiting each second, they'd have been envious.

I have no choice, which is the best kind of choice.

The price of deceit is to feel like a cockroach. She listens as he recounts the newspaper stories of the raids, and of Arikkad's death while trying to escape. "The Naxalite

The devotional's parsimonious scale, melody, and syncopation feel like a part of her. Janaki, her Tamilian ayah who has been with her from the time she was a little girl in Calcutta, would sing it as she brushed Celeste's hair.

sometimes we have to "live the question," not push for the answer.

theabout the Feeding Center. I meant it, Philipose —I'm proud of you. You're saving lives. But think about this, Philipose: if nothing changes, if the people have no way to escape poverty, if the pulayar can never own land or pass on wealth to their children, then the next time there's a famine, it'll be the same people standing in line. And it will take people like you to feed them.

This is the covenant of water: that they're all linked inescapably by their acts of commission and omission, and no one stands alone.

such memories are woven from gossamer threads; time eats holes in the fabric, and these she must darn with myth and fable. The

What can one do but go on? She miscarries again. When she recovers, she looks to cast blame: might this be the doing of the spirit in the cellar? Could it be that spiteful? She descends to the cellar and sits on an empty urn, sniffing the air, taking her soundings. To her surprise she feels the spirit commiserate with her. She comes away mollified.

Years later, when Idi Amin said and did outrageous things, I understood that his motivation was to rattle the good people of Greenwich mean time, have them raise their heads from their tea and scones, and say, Oh yes. Africa. For a fleeting moment they'd have the same awareness of us that we had of them.

God only knows why miscarriages happen. God only knows—but doesn't choose to explain.

She will pray, too, but mostly she'll try to hold on to this feeling of stillness. Whether God has spoken or has yet to speak, she's at peace.

Rune was taught that leprosy is rarely contagious. The causative bacterium lives in the environment, more so in unclean settings, but only those with unique susceptibility get the disease. He recalls Professor Mehr in Malmö dressing leprous wounds with impunity, saying, "Worry about other diseases you might get from your patients, not leprosy." Indeed, Rune lost one classmate to tuberculosis, and another to sepsis from a scalpel cut.