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My books are not really books; they're endless chains of distraction shoved inside a cover. Many of them begin at the search box of Pub Med, an Internet database of medical journal articles.

Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.

I hate books; they only teach us to talk about things we know nothing about.

In medicine, there's a fairly large but still finite body of knowledge that you need at hand for most of your daily work. It takes a few years to learn it, but once it's there, it's there. With writing, on the other hand, every new book - indeed, every new story - is a fresh and terrifying reinvention of everything.

I like medicine. Even if I was selling a million books a year, I would still be a doctor.

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

I no longer practice medicine, but I can say that, for me, medicine was easier - and certainly less emotionally turbulent - than writing.

I have a couple of dozen books on my reader: ideal for a long trip or an afternoon waiting at the medical clinic. It's flexible.

How can anybody hate nurses? Nobody hates nurses. The only time you hate a nurse is when they're giving you an enema.