Steven Amsterdam Quotations

You walk into someone's house and they're dying, or they've got a family member who is dying. Your needs are minor; you're there to serve and to advise and to educate. You're not there to provide yourself.

I've always thought flight was fun and wanted to write about flight, and I knew a lot of househusbands who were having a really bad time with it. I thought flight might perk up a marriage here or there.

I used to do jacket design, and I'm very conscious of covers, and probably meddle more than other authors would.

I'm never going to write a whole paragraph describing what a living room looks like.

Fiction demands structures and recognizable shapes. Big surprises only draw attention to the writer's hand.

Until I became a nurse, no one had ever asked me to sign a book contract. I had been writing for decades, read thousands of books, and even worked in publishing for 10 years. Who knew that nursing would be my break?

A story is built on characters and reasons.

I could imagine that a character could do almost anything at any time, and that was the freedom of the whole thing. But keeping track of what was plausible for certain characters [was the challenge].

Being with a small publisher has been huge. They bat for me for everything.

The better we are at accepting the limits of our world, the more easily we can embrace what we have.

Nursing demands vigilance about people. The sights and smells that a patient offers, their movements and their offhand comments all contribute crucial information to understanding what they need. Training and experience heighten one's ability to see what needs to be seen.