For a writer, you definitely do not want to be in the mainstream. You want to be on the edge because that's where the vantage point is. That's where you can see.

I think all characters are facets of the writer. In a way, they have to be if you're going to write them convincingly.

Fiction is an elemental force, which has the power to shape reality in its own image - or images, I should say - because reality, like light, exists not only as a single point or particle, but also as an array of possibilities.

My vantage point on the world is the operating room where I see my patients.

I've always played that edge of fact and fiction. I used to be a filmmaker, and certainly in film that's a line that filmmakers cross more readily and more easily than novelists.

The relationship between reader and writer is reciprocal in a way. We co-create each other. We are constantly emerging out of the relationship we have with others.