People often need to describe things quickly and so they use a shorthand. The problem is that after they use a label, they begin to think only in terms of the label instead of the totality of the experience a novel provides.

When someone gets a success, and we, too, have done good work and sometimes even better work than the person who has just triumphed, we wonder: Why did success pass me by?

Novels should be judged rigorously. Either a book works or it doesn't. The fact that something is true in the real world should not lend authority to it in fiction.

Ernest Hemingway has been the most important influence on me as a writer. But at a certain point as a writer, I realized that he was writing about good people doing good things. This did not match my experience of life and so I found my sentences stretching and becoming less plain.

Exposition suggests a great trust in the reader, and this expression of trust makes a book feel tender.

Intern will resonate not only with doctors, but with anyone who has struggled with the grand question 'What should I do with my life?' In a voice of profound honesty and intelligence, Sandeep Jauhar gives us an insider's look at the medical profession and also a dramatic account of the psychological challenges of early adulthood.

It is hard to write about physically difficult things without causing the reader to disengage.