Fiction is ideally suited to re-creating the important emotional aspects of history.

Within walking distance of any spot on Earth there's probably more than enough mystery to investigate in a lifetime.

Everything is connected. There is no such thing as an island, especially in our world, global village, the whole thing. Pollution from way across the ocean circulates in the air.

There is still nothing like equality for women in jobs, in family. There's just an awareness that inequality is not acceptable.

I see old age not as something to hide from or dread (though there is much to oppose in the usual treatment of the old) but rather as something to embrace as the natural and inevitable end.

As I experienced life on the island, without electricity, plumbing or telephone, I thought it was important to show that people can live as I did without dying or falling apart. I wanted people to understand that we don't need everything that our culture tells us we have to have to be satisfied.

My mirror image always had to be interpreted. And for that I sought my reflection in someone else's eyes.