The challenge to writers today, I think, is not to disown any part of our heritage. Whatever our theme in writing, it is old and tried. Whatever our place, it has been visited by the stranger, it will never be new again. It is only the vision that can be new; but that is enough.

Passion is our ground, our island - do others exist?

I wanted to read immediately. The only fear was that of books coming to an end.

I learned quickly enough when to click the shutter, but what I was becoming aware of more slowly was a story-writer's truth: The thing to wait on, to reach for, is the moment in which people reveal themselves... I learned from my own pictures, one by one, and had to; for I think we are the breakers of our own hearts.

I had to grow up and learn to listen for the unspoken as well as the spoken-and to know a truth.

A whole tree of lightning stood in the sky. She kept looking out the window, suffused with the warmth from the fire and with the pity and beauty and power of her death. The thunder rolled.

Ah, I'm a woman that's been clear around the world in my rocking chair, and I tell you we all get surprises now and then.