'Forever Amber,' written by Kathleen Winsor in 1944, was banned in Boston at the time of its publication as obscene and offensive. This alone would have been enough to excite my interest, but in 1956, it was sitting inoffensively on the shelves of the small country library on the north shore of Oahu, Hawaii, where my family spent its summers.

Susanna Moore

Categorized in : Alone Time Family Library

I think memories are like dreams. Not reliable proof of anything. I can't prove a memory any more than I can prove a dream.

Susanna Moore

dream memories thinking

The belief that love is a finite essence that will eventually run out holds a certain logic for me even now, even if I am supposed to know better.

Susanna Moore

essence running love-is

New York is like a big dinner party. You have to be very careful about what you say and do because you never know whose feet are touching under the table.

Susanna Moore

party new-york feet

On its 2015 list, the Fish and Wildlife Service included the 'ea, or hawksbill turtle, as well as the green turtle, Ridley sea turtle, leatherback turtle and loggerhead turtle. Four mammals are considered endangered: the Hawaiian hoary bat; the kohola, or humpback whale; the sperm whale; and the endemic Hawaiian monk seal.

Susanna Moore

fish service green sea

I was betting on cockfights in the Filipino workers' camps when I was 11.

Susanna Moore

filipino betting camps workers

The chance of any species reaching and then surviving on an island as distant as one of the Hawaiian chain is infinitesimal, but despite the extraordinary odds, plants and seeds found their way ashore, carried by the tide or blown by trade winds, inside birds or in their feathers, in the branches of trees and in the jetsam of sunken ships.

Susanna Moore

plants birds chance way

Women are completely disadvantaged - despite what men will say. It is not a fair fight.

Susanna Moore

will fight women men

Writing can't be taught.

Susanna Moore

taught writing

Young writers reasonably say, 'I don't know what to write about,' so writing about yourself is a very literal way to begin.

Susanna Moore

yourself know writing way

The point always is to be writing something - it leads to more writing.

Susanna Moore

more something always writing

'In the Cut' was not what readers expected of me. Before it was published, I was seen as a women's writer, which meant that I wrote movingly about flowers and children.

Susanna Moore

flowers me women children

Transgressive to me means breaking the rules and sinning. I don't see myself as breaking the rules and sinning. I'm really interested in what it means to be female.

Susanna Moore

rules see myself me

The task of understanding the past is neverending.

Susanna Moore

task understanding past

When I was nine, I was taught to ride a surfboard in Waikiki by the beach boy Rabbit Kekai.

Susanna Moore

rabbit boy ride beach

As a girl, I sat awestruck at the feet of Harriet Ne, author of 'Tales of Molokai'. It was she who used to say, 'I myself have seen it,' after telling a particularly hair-raising ghost story - a phrase that I borrowed for one of my titles.

Susanna Moore

story myself girl feet

Each year, I await with dread the federal government's catalog of endangered and threatened species in the Hawaiian Islands, where I was raised and where I live.

Susanna Moore

i-was-raised live year government

People will be able to survive, of course, without honeycreepers and monk seals. But if the wolf spider is in trouble, we are in trouble, too.

Susanna Moore

survive will trouble people

I lived in Calcutta for five months in 1999. While I was there, I read many journals, diaries, collections of letters and histories.

Susanna Moore

lived read five letters

'Calcutta is a pot of honey' means that in the first half of the nineteenth century, before the society became truly Victorian in feeling and tone, Bengal was a place to make money. The governor-generals returned to England rich men. It was a bountiful, lush, prosperous, easy place to make a fortune - in coal, in jute, and particularly cloth.

Susanna Moore

rich society money men

It is possible to say that all of my books concern themselves with the notion of what it means to be female - whether it is in New York City in 2000 or Calcutta in 1836. In that way, my books really are the same.

Susanna Moore

say city new way