I feel like plenty of people have normal-seeming families that, as they're growing up, feel awful. I'd rather have one that looks weird from the outside but felt really normal.

To develop your own voice, you have to keep writing a ton, and this is something where I think Twitter is helpful. I use it to write a ton of jokes. You have to write a ton of bad stuff before you know what you're good at. And that's what some people I think have trouble with, the thought of getting past the bad stuff.

Support other women! We are taught to be competitive with other women, to vie with them for the 'girl spot' in a group or job. Anything that helps an individual woman is good for all of us! Love and support your friends!

I love math and science, and also, my mom is a doctor. I grew up not even having an awareness that women were not supposed to be good at science.

I had first-hand experience watching my father's health decline over the stretch of 13 years.

Poetry seems to have been eliminated as a literary genre, and installed instead, as a kind of spiritual aerobic exercise - nobody need read it, but anybody can do it.

One of the things that made Epic strong when I wrote the original code was that it never occurred to me to do anything other than put the patient at the center. I developed a clinical system at a time when the health care world had pretty much only billing and lab systems available.

I think cancer is a hard battle to fight alone or with another person at your side, but I will say having someone to pick you up when you fall, stand by your side through every appointment and delivery of bad news, is priceless.