I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself, I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself now and then in finding a smoother pebble or prettier shell than ordinary, while the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.
I see myself as the literary equivalent of a skilled lathe-operator, or a basket-weaver; a potter, maybe: I make mildly diverting objects that people want to buy.
So for me the approach has become to go into a story not really sure of what I want to say, try to find some little seed crystal of interest, a sentence or an image or an idea, and as much as possible divest myself of any deep ideas about it. And then by this process of revision, mysteriously it starts to accrete meanings as you go.
I find myself hoping a total end of all the unhappy divisions of mankind by party-spirit, which at best is but the madness of many for the gain of a few.
I think like any marriage, especially when you've had divorced parents like myself; you want to try even harder to make it work.
I became married at a young age and had two daughters and divorced at 26. I had to go on welfare to make ends meet. I had no way to support myself.
It took me a long time to be convinced that marriage was right for me because I've come from a long line of broken marriages. My parents divorced, and I had two broken marriages myself.
It has been the case for some time that I have made myself dizzy thinking about the fact that the implementation of the Three-fold Program of the government, above all in the area of food and clothing, has been experiencing difficulties.
Coming out of the Louvre for the first time in 1971, dizzy with new love, I stood on Pont Neuf and made a pledge to myself that the art of this newly discovered world in the Old World would be my life companion.
I don't like asking people for things, so if I can do it myself, that's the mindset I have. My dad is very much a do-it-yourself kind of person, so I had a strong sense of independence.
I don't see myself playing the docile, submissive bahu on television!
I had the most incredible English and literature teachers in school, and it really influenced my love of storytelling. It's what made me excited to study journalism in college. I love editorials and documentaries. All of that came from being given the opportunity to lose myself in good writing when I was a kid.
I remember the first time seeing myself on TV, when my family was watching the documentary 'Eyes on the Prize' for the first time. There were pictures of people going up the school stairs, and Mom said, 'Oh, that's you!' I said, 'I can't believe this. This is important.'
I was watching the Nina Simone documentary alone in my room, and I said out loud to myself, 'Why do we not know that this woman is beauty? She is beauty! Why did no one tell me this growing up? Why was her name not next to 'beauty' in the dictionary?'
I'm direct, I'm unpretentious and I'm pretty dogged, and I hope I've got a capacity to laugh at myself and not take myself too seriously.
I always knew that the only thing I wanted to do was act, but it took me a long time to say it out loud to anyone, let alone myself. I am surprised by how dogged I have been in wanting to make a living as a respected actress.
I'm an introvert... I love being by myself, love being outdoors, love taking a long walk with my dogs and looking at the trees, flowers, the sky.
I did a lot of things that I regretted and I certainly paid for my mistakes. You have to go and ask for forgiveness and it wasn't until I really started doing good and doing right, by other people as well as myself, that I really started to feel that guilt go away. So I don't have a problem going to sleep at night.
If I can start my day out by saying my prayers and getting myself focused, then I know I'm doing the right thing. That 10 minutes helps me in every way throughout the day.
I don't doll myself up for TV because I want people to accept me for who I am.
