I am an American, but a sense of otherness was part of my growing up. I spoke Norwegian before I spoke English. My mother is Norwegian.

Intellectual curiosity about one's own illness is certainly born of a desire for mastery. If I couldn't cure myself, perhaps I could at least begin to understand myself.

I am always suspicious of those who impose 'rules' on child rearing. Every child is different in terms of temperament and learning, and every parent responds to a particular child, not some generalized infant or youngster.

I have found that all of my memories seem to need a place and that a good part of what we think of as explicit memory has to do with location.

Writing is very much an emotional process; it requires you to be very in touch with your feelings. That is the opposite of what you're taught as a medical doctor. We're supposed to be detached and logical. Maybe because I started off as a writer and then became a doctor, I'm able to integrate those two.

My parents were funny. My brothers were funny. We just laughed and had a good time. Growing up, it breeds that. It breeds your funny. It breeds your creativity.

Like every novelist, I fantasise about film. Novelists are not equipped to make a movie, in my opinion. They make their own movie when they write: they're casting, they're dressing the scene, they're working out where the energy of the scene is coming from, and they're also relying tremendously on the creative imagination of the reader.

When I'm not shooting, I love going on adventures with friends. I love zip-lining through rainforests and different natural habitats, and I love writing music on the side, and I love drinking coffee. I'm a big coffee drinker and go to a lot of cafes and stuff.