Medicine involves dealing with people who are going through changes and cycles, often people trapped in bodies that are going out from under them. Spending time with them lets you think their way, gives you insights as a writer.

Medicine is a supremely useful profession. Fiction writing is not.

It's the writer's job to disarm the reader of his logic, to just make the reader feel.

Fiction is about small ambition, small failed ambition, small disappointed hope.

In our romantic groves I adored her like a divinity.

I'd love to do more woodworking, and maybe will someday, but I wasn't brought up in that environment. My wife is better at woodworking, and most around-the-house skills, than I am.

I think a family is the best way to open up the appeal of a show because everyone has a mother. Everyone has a father. Everyone has cousins or siblings. Everyone's trying to pursue their romantic ideals and their relationship ideals.

My landlady, who is only a tailor's widow, reads her Milton; and tells me, that her late husband first fell in love with her on this very account: because she read Milton with such proper emphasis.