Kim Edwards

“I find my husband's family history fascinating, as they can trace the family lineage back to ancestors who fought, and died, in the first battle of the Revolution, as well as to many other interesting people.”

“Rows and rows of books lined the shelves and I let my eyes linger on the sturdy spines, thinking how human books were, so full of ideas and images, worlds imagined, worlds perceived; full of fingerprints and sudden laughter and the sighs of readers, too. It was humbling to consider all these authors, struggling with this word or that phrase, recording their thoughts for people they'd never meet. In that same way, the detritus of the boxes was humbling - receipts, jotted notes, photos with no inscriptions, all of it once held together by the fabric of lives now finished, gone.”

“She imagined herself as some sort of vessel to be filled up with love. But it wasn't like that. The love was within her all the time, and its only renewal came from giving it away.”

“You don't know when you are immersed in a book what the reaction to it will be, but I feel great about 'The Lake of Dreams.'”

“I think that it would be hard to find a family that didn't have a secret in it somewhere, and sometimes we know about them, sometimes we don't. Sometimes we have an inkling that there's something hidden, but I think that it touches everybody's life.”

“No one could suspect the intricate mysteries of her heart.”

“I love to swim, and I love being near water.”

“One of my greatest times of inspiration is when I'm traveling or living in a new country - there's a tremendous freedom that comes from being unfettered by your own, familiar culture, and by seeing the world from a different point of view.”

“Many Lexington natives believe they live in a special place, one impossible to leave. I'm not so sure about that - or it's more accurate to say I think a more general truth exists beneath it: the place you first call home stays with you always, whether you remain or go.”

“Lexington is home to the University of Kentucky, where my husband and I teach, as well as to Transylvania University, the oldest college established west of the Allegheny Mountains, and several multinational companies; people come and go from all over the world.”

“I lived for two years in Odawara, a castle town an hour outside of Tokyo, near the sea. It's a beautiful place, and I drew on my experiences there when writing 'The Lake of Dreams.'”

“I grew up in Skaneateles, a small town in New York's Finger Lakes region, where parts of my family have lived for five generations. I can walk the streets there and point out my father's childhood home, the houses my grandfather built, the farm where my great-great-uncle worked after he emigrated from England in the 1880s.”

“William Trevor is an author I admire; his stories are subtle and powerful, and beautifully written.”

“It's funny how things seem different, suddenly.”

“There was a sense that there was a lot of word of mouth happening with 'The Memory Keeper's Daughter,' even in hardcover.”

“... the Iroquois take dreams very seriously. They see them as the secret wishes of the soul--the heart's desire, so to speak. Not all dreams, maybe, but the important ones. [p.254]”

“You can't stop time. You can't capture light. You can only turn your face up and let it rain down.”

“In some deep place in her heart, Caroline had kept alive the silly romantic notion that somehow David Henry had once known her as no one else ever could. But it was not true. He had never even glimpsed her.”

“Your understanding of a place changes the longer you stay; you discover more, and your own life gets woven into the fabric of the community.”

“I don't think we'll ever lose the desire for people to tell stories or to hear stories or to be entrapped in a beautiful story.”