I'm a craftsman type of teacher. I don't like the thematic type of teaching that takes place in a lot of colleges.

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.

I like to write about the moment of light in the hour of darkness.

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

Bausch is a wonderful storyteller. He's a mature writer who has a lot of confidence in the quality of character. He doesn't need to hook you with a sneaky plot and zany characters.

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.