Use range to fill an array

I have an array I want to fill with a rane of cells from a worksheet. I can do this using

dim myArray as variant

With Workbooks("Book1").Worksheets("Sheet1")

lastRow = .Range("A7").End(xlDown).Row    
myArray = Range(.Cells(7, "A"), .Cells(lastRow, "A")).Value

End With

My question is can I use a similar technique to fill the array with strings instead of variants?