I can only remember two books from college that moved me: E.M. Forster's 'Howards End' and F. Scott Fitzgerald's 'The Great Gatsby.'

Point of view gets me. If I can feel like a character rather than a reader, I'll read that book.

In the winter, I read next to a wood-burning stove. In the summer, we have a place up in Michigan where I like to read in a hammock. It's almost entirely hidden by cedar trees and right up by the water. You can climb in there and see nothing but water and be seen by nobody. It's perfect.

Writers of literature make very little money.

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.

People are surprised when Hollywood characters act the way a real person would.

A novel, at least for me, cannot be visualized at one time.

When I write, I can become this ecstatic, crazy fellow, hearing the voices and just loosening up and letting them grow.

Families tend to artificially divide the world, imbuing one member with all the attributes and another with all the faults. But it's never that way.

I like writing about the evil lurking in apparently good people.