In the laboratory, we call this the six-degrees-of-separation-from-cancer rule: you can ask any biological question, no matter how seemingly distant-what makes the heart fail, or why worms age, or even how birds learn songs-and you will end up, in fewer than six genetic steps, connecting with a proto-oncogene or tumor suppressor.

I am a scientist and I am a physician. So I write papers.

Writing anything as an expert is really poisonous to the writing process, because you lose the quality of discovery.

Most days, I go home and I feel rejuvenated. I feel ebullient.

There is a very moving and ancient connection between cancer and depression.

I think the cardinal rule of learning to write is learning to read first. I learned to write by learning to read.

I think when we use 'stress', we are often using a kind of dummy word to try to fit many different things into one big category.