i find it easy to admire in trees what depresses me in people

I think we validate our lives through our actions.

I communicate much better with cats, usually. I know them and their body language - as my own cats know mine very well. Cats are adept at reading subtle signals.

We can only know what we can truly imagine. Finally what we see comes from ourselves.

If I observe my cats carefully, it is partly because I observe everyone I deal with as carefully as I can and partly because they amuse and entertain me. They are an important part of the fabric of my daily life.

I don't think writers change the past any more than other people do, except in so far as we may mine our lives and change things for fictional use.

I did not always know I would be a writer. Until I had a room of my own, I did not write much at all - no more than any other child who read a lot of books. I began to write fiction and poetry when I first had a room that was truly my own with a door that shut and some measure, however fragile, of privacy.