Cutting for Stone

by Abraham Verghese

“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.

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

As she bent over the child she realized that the tragedy of death had to do entirely with what was left unfulfilled.

Make something beautiful of your life. Wasn’t that the adage Sister Mary Joseph Praise lived by?

Men like him became stubborn with opposition, because their convictions were all they had.

It seems we humans never learn. And so we relearn the lesson every generation and then want to write epistles.

Now and then Ghosh would grin and wink at me across the room. He was teaching me how to die, just as he’d taught me how to live.

“Marion, I know you think I favored Shiva … And maybe I did. What can I say but that I’m sorry. A mother loves her children equally … but sometimes one child needs more help, more attention, to get by in the world. Shiva needed that.