Home: A Memoir of My Early Years

Once in a while I experience an emotion onstage that is so gut-wrenching, so heart-stopping, that I could weep with gratitude and joy. The feeling catches and magnifies so rapidly that it threatens to engulf me.

Remember: the amateur works until he can get it right. The professional works until he cannot go wrong.

A rose lay open in full bloom and, looking from my garden room, I watched the sun-baked flower fill with rain. It seemed so fragile, resting there, and such a silence filled the air, the beauty of the moment caused me pain. "What more?" I thought. "There must be more." As if in answer then, I saw one weighty drop that caused my rose to fall. It trembled, then cascaded down to earth just staining gentle brown and, since then, I've felt different. That's all.

Early one beautiful summer evening, when everyone else was drinking indoors, Tony and I walked down to the river. We lay on the grass under a tree and chatted. At one point, Tony said, "Look at the pattern of lace the leaves make against the sky." I looked at the canopy above us, and suddenly saw what he saw. My perspective completely shifted. I realized I didn't have his "eyes" -- though once he pointed it out, it became obvious. It made me think, "My God, I never look enough," and in the years since, I've tried very hard to look -- and look again.

You must never be embarrassed when you are moved by music?' [“Madame” Lilian Stiles-Allen] counseled. 'It shows that you are a sensitive human being, capable of much feeling.

A FEW MONTHS prior to my departure, Alan and Moss asked me to read an extraordinary book based on the Arthurian legend, called The Once and Future King, by T. H. White. They hoped to make it into a musical, and asked if I would play the role of Queen Guenevere.

You must never be embarrassed when you are moved by music,” she counseled. “It shows that you are a sensitive human being, capable of much feeling.

Dad was not a religious man, and he once said to me that he didn’t think he would believe in God at all were it not for the existence of two things: trees — and man’s conscience. He said that without trees, we would not survive on this planet, for they feed us, clothe us, shelter us, make oxygen. Without a conscience, man would probably never have developed beyond a primitive state.

Overnight, it seemed, tickets to the show were like gold dust. The advance sales were tremendous. We heard that a couple had received a pair of tickets anonymously in the mail. Though they had no idea who had sent them, they decided to take advantage of the generous gift. They came to the theatre, had a wonderful evening and went home to discover their house had been burgled. The burglars had left the