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When you're in medicine - especially when you're a resident in a public hospital - you feel like you're doing your part. But not when you're a writer.

I'm usually a patient guy anyway.

If a person is treated like a patient, they are apt to act like one.

If I get hit by a bus tomorrow, my patients will not even be postponed. Another surgeon would step in and take over. The reason to do research and writing is that it at least makes me feel not entirely replaceable. If I didn't write, I don't know if I would do surgery.

Sit down to write what you have thought, and not to think about what you shall write.

It's not so much that I want to direct but that I have to. When I write something it terrifies me that if I give it to someone else and it doesn't turn out as it could have done, I'd feel as if I'd orphaned my baby.

You don't want to diminish anybody's pain and suffering.

As doctors, we are not trained to communicate and understand the power of our words as they relate to a patient's ability and desire to survive.