Tess Gerritsen Quotes

I wanted to be an actor ever since I got on stage for the first time, aged 13. Before that, I thought I might follow in the medical footsteps of my parents: my father was a doctor, my mother a pharmacist.

I wish medical schools helped us to analyze our healthy and unhealthy reasons for becoming doctors.

My parents had chosen the medical profession for me. I even studied a few semesters at St Xavier's College, but at the back of my mind, I always wanted to be a musician like my father.

When I was a young girl, I was so crazy about animals that I wanted to do something associated with them, and I thought of being a vet. But then again, I figured I had to go to medical school, and science wasn't a good subject for me, so I dropped the idea pretty soon and thought maybe I could be a vet's assistant.

I became a writer because I got addicted to story. The first storyteller in my life was my father.

When I went to medical school, the term 'digital' applied only to rectal exams.

My mother was always deeply attracted to anything medical, and I think she would have loved me to have been a doctor. My father was in the army for 21 years, came out just before I was born. There was no history of showbusiness on either side of the family, but they were completely supportive.

I used to just daydream all the time about being in movies, from the age of, like, four onwards. I would sit down and watch movies with my father and my grandfather, and always pretended that I was in the stories.

I always wanted to be a writer, from being a little kid onwards. My dad and my mum both had phases when that was what they did.

I don't want to be remembered as a writer. I would rather be remembered as a storyteller.

Remember, I'm a doctor's daughter. So obviously I'm interested in all medical things.

A storyteller is basically what actors and writers are.

I'm a writer. I just love telling stories.

Certainly when I got to medical school, I had role models of the kind of physicians I wanted to be. I had an uncle who, looking back, was probably not the most-educated physician around, but he carried it off so well.

Having the urge to write a novel, especially if you've yet to be published, is like having a medical condition impossible to mention in polite company - it's a relief simply to know there are fellow-sufferers out there.

I told my parents when I was 12 I'd be a writer.

I always wanted to be a medical doctor, and I never thought of business.

I studied in a medical college and qualified myself as a medical graduate.

Most writers, by the time they're 60, must have revisited their childhood a dozen times.

My dad was an editor and a writer, and that's actually what I aspired to be.

Before I reached 10 years old, I knew I was going to be an artist.

I am essentially an entertainer and a storyteller.

I entered the literary world, really, from outside. My entire background has been in sciences; I was a biology major in college, then went to medical school. I've never had any formal training in writing.

From a very young age my mother persuaded me that I could write for fun, but I had to have a proper job - very good advice.

Dad always explained the car engine when he repaired it, and he had many technical books, so I was making electromagnets by age eight as well as reading my mother's medical and nursing books. I suspect I was born with a boundless curiosity, and this was encouraged through my childhood.