Through travel I first became aware of the outside world; it was through travel that I found my own introspective way into becoming a part of it.

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.

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.

My own words, when I am at work on a story, I hear too as they go, in the same voice that I hear when I read in books. When I write and the sound of it comes back to my ears, then I act to make changes. I have always trusted this voice.

If you haven't surprised yourself, you haven't written.

We are the breakers of our own hearts

What I do in the writing of any character is to try to enter into the mind, heart and skin of a human being who is not myself. It is the act of a writer's imagination that I set the most high.