Big book by forty

[My editor] suggested postponing publication [of Awakenings] so that sections could be prepublished in The Sunday Times, but I was strongly against this, because I wanted to see the book published on or before my birthday in July. I would be forty then, and I wanted to be able to say, "I may be forty, have lost my youth, but at least I have done something, I have written this book.

Oliver Sacks, On the Move: A Life (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2015)