I wanted to ask him  if he was writing, Was he finding the time? For years, as a busy physician, I’d struggled to find the time to write. I wanted to tell him that a famous writer, commiserating about this eternal problem, once said to me: “If I were a neurosurgeon and I announced I had to leave my guests to go in for an emergency craniotomy, no one would say a word. But if I said I needed to leave the guests in the living room to go upstairs to write…” I wondered if Paul would have found this funny. After all, he could actually say he was going to do a craniotomy! It was plausible! And then he could go write instead.

Abraham Verghese, foreword to “When Breath Becomes Air” by Paul Kalanithi.