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.

Among the difficulties I encountered, economic problems were the worst. I found that financial hardships could limit one's ability to realize one's dream, no matter how desperate and earnest you are.

I don't get handed money - and I never will. I have to work!

Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.

A lot of times when people become successful, people don't really understand what they had to do or the sacrifices they made to do that, or they assume that they had money. This is coming from, like, a kid who was broke and lived with roaches and a single mom in Dorchester.