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 wit….

Many people spend the ends of their lives alone, and probably a lot of years in the middle of their lives, and I'm glad I had the opportunity to expe….

It's always difficult to write honestly of one's deepest feelings, particularly without the protective veil of fiction. But the more difficult, the m….

Solitude offers a lot that being coupled or being in a group does not. It helps us learn what we are capable of..

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

Usually, ordinary histories don't get the emotional feel of a period. That's what a novel can do..

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

People often say to me now, "Your work changed my life." I'm sure that's an exaggeration, but they say it had a big effect on them and enabled them t….

In my books, my idea is always to explore social context and social forces..

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

For many decades my relations with my parents constituted unfinished business. I had dealt with them through sheer avoidance and guilt..

One important part of historical recording is to get people of another generation to understand the feelings, the passion that went into social trans….

Sexism goes so deep that at first it's hard to see; you think it's just reality..

Being alone for a woman is probably much more scary than for a man. I'm all for getting over our fears by facing them head-on..

Ever since Freud, being alone has been considered something of a psychological failure. The point, according to Freudian theory, is to be able to lov….

I am a feminist. I'm trying to show the relationships between men and women, always the structural relations, not individual villains. I'd never make….

When you witness the end of a life up close day by day, you begin to understand time and mortality in profound ways. You see time's relativity, death….

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

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 em….

There is a lot of gender segregation. You still have many poor women who work in women-only jobs. In the family, in most cases, only women have the d….

When farming became a corporate venture, and the distribution of food became corporate, the variety of foods that were considered good diminished gre….