The Arts Collide: 10 Quotes From Doctor-Writers

“The advice of the elders to young men is very apt to be as unreal as a list of the hundred best books,” said American author and doctor Oliver Wendell Holmes. Nonetheless, sometimes it’s helpful to hear from those who have gone before—if only to know you’re not alone.

And doctor writers are indeed not alone. From Anton Chekhov to Michael Crichton, they have a long history of success. Writer Andrea Crawford explored the doctor-writer connection in the magazine Poets & Writers last year. “Medical training, like writing,” she found, “requires a long view of life; and learning to always be aware of—and separate from—one’s emotions helps to sharpen observational skills.”

Here are some quotes from doctor-writers. Do any ring true for you?

“Medicine is my lawful wife and literature is my mistress. When I get tired of one I spend the night with the other.Though it’s disorderly, it’s not so dull, and besides neither of them loses anything from my infidelity. If I did not have my medical work I doubt if I could have given my leisure and my spare thoughts to literature. There is no discipline in me.”
—Anton Chekhov, 1860–1904, Russian author of The Seagull

“When people ask me which I would rather give up, writing or medicine, it’s like being asked which eye I’d prefer to have poked out with a spoon: neither, and please use a fork.”
—Chris Adrian, 1970– , American author of The Children’s Hospital

Language is the blood of the soul into which thoughts run and out of which they grow.”
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, 1809–1894, American author

I think all writing is a disease. You can’t stop it.”
—William Carlos Williams, 1883–1963, American poet

“While medicine creates material for writing, perhaps even more important is that it also creates a psychological and emotional need to write.”
—Daniel Mason, contemporary American author of The Piano Turner

“But being able to talk to so many patients from so many walks of life gives a tremendous window into people’s lives. This is not to say I want to write about individual patients, but I think that after listening to the concerns of people who are so different from me, I can more realistically portray characters who are so different from me.”
—Daniel Mason, contemporary American author of The Piano Turner

“I really think I probably never would have written this book if I hadn’t been in medical school. In some ways, there was a thrill to writing, in the sense that I wasn’t supposed to be doing it.”
—Daniel Mason, contemporary American author of The Piano Turner

“Poetry, while it probably does not actually do nothing in general, does nothing (to my knowledge) for a spastic colon. Yet it seems to me that good doctors and good writers are both likely to be keen social observers, and that when you are doing good work in medicine or in fiction you are making obvious previously unseen connections.”
—Chris Adrian, 1970– , American author of The Children’s Hospital

“When they ask me, as of late they frequently do, how I have for so many years continued an equal interest in medicine and the poem, I reply that they amount for me to nearly the same thing.”
—William Carlos Williams, 1883–1963, American poet