Not as ours the books of old - Things that steam can stamp and fold; Not as ours the books of yore - Rows of type, and nothing more.
But those two plays left me on fresh terms with language. I didn't always have to speak in my own voice.
You can grow up without having to conform, stop going to shows, stop having a record collection, start being politically iffy.
I've been ignored by prettier women than you, but none who carried the heavy pitchers of silence so far, without spilling a drop.
When you acknowledge the integrity of your solitude, and settle into its mystery, your relationships with others take on a new warmth, adventure and wonder.
I always was kind of on the edge of the church when I was fully in it , cos I was always asking the questions... And I could never believe blindly.
Working overseas is more difficult in that it's much more complicated to get people to open their hearts to you and to tell you information.
The most essential factor is persistence - the determination never to allow your energy or enthusiasm to be dampened by the discouragement that must inevitably come.
Here was a fragment of Goddess myth that, through all its permutations, had somehow escaped being turned on its head. It was the perfect springboard for the sort of novel I wanted to write.
And so The Snow Queen also became a story about the need to seek equilibrium, in our own lives, with the natural world, even within the universe at large.
The mers were also designed to reproduce only at long intervals, in order to maintain the natural balance of the environment in which they were placed.
Perhaps the thing that makes humans truly unique on Earth is that we are never satisfied with our situation; maybe that is what's taken us so far.
The Sophists' paradoxical talk pieces and their public debates were entertainment in 5th century Greece. And in that world, Socrates was an entertainer.
My mother turned into a professional widow. She couldn't understand why I wanted to be an engineer; she thought I should be a chicken farmer.
I've always had a strong feeling for the Statue of Liberty, because it became the statue of my personal liberty.
I'm standing up thinking. Anybody who wants to listen is welcome. If not, I'm happy to see them go.
I wanted to be an inventor, whatever I thought that meant then. I guess I was thinking of Edison or maybe James Watt. Or maybe even Newton.
When my mother left her second husband, she wrote her autobiography and presented it to him for his approval.
I didn't think about whether I was writing poems. I was thinking. And the more I was thinking, the more there was I didn't understand.
Children frequently sing meaningful phrases to themselves over and over again before they learn to make a distinction between singing and saying.
Two or three things I know for sure, and one is that I'd rather go naked than wear the coat the world has made for me.
