Death, with its ancestral weight of terrors, is merely the abandonment of an unserviceable shell at the time the spiritis reintegrated into the unified energy of the cosmos. The end of life, like birth, is...

At times I felt that the universe fabricated from the power of imagination had stronger and more lasting contours than the blurred realm of the flesh-and-blood creatures around me.

I never try to convey a message, I just want to tell a story. Why that story in particular? I have no idea, but I have learned to surrender to the muse. I become obsessed...

Americans have a warrior’s mentality, most of them. That’s how this society was built. The fact that you own a gun and shoot to defend your life is a very American way of thinking.

I never thought that I would come to live in the United States. I was not pursuing the American dream.

Writing is my job. I don’t think of it as art.

La verdadera amistad, pensaban, resiste el paso del tiempo, es desinteresada y generosa, no pide nada a cambio, sólo lealtad.

I learned very quickly that when you emigrate, you lose the crutches that have been your support; you must begin from zero, because the past is erased with a single stroke and no one cares...

I’m aware of the mystery around us, so I write about coincidences, premonitions, emotions, dreams, the power of nature, magic.

I have been a foreigner all my life, first as a daughter of diplomats, then as a political refugee and now as an immigrant in the U.S. I have had to leave everything behind and...

I never try to give a message in my books. It’s about living with characters long enough to hear their voices and let them tell me the story. Sometimes I would love to have a...

…Me voy tranquilo, Tao,porque nadie podría cuidar a mi hija Eliza mejor que usted.-Nadie podría amarla mas que yo,señor.

As Sancho said, money does not buy happiness but it does buy nearly everything else.

I don’t want an uneventful and safe life, I prefer an adventurous one.

I’m interested in people who have to overcome obstacles, people who are not sheltered by the umbrella of the establishment, marginals.

Although women do two-thirds of the world’s labor, they own less than one percent of the world’s assets.

I think that any writer who is commercial, who sells a lot of books, has to face criticism. Because the more hermetic and the more difficult your book is, supposedly it’s better.

The Indians’ insistence on clinging to their customs had to be the work of Satan there was no other explanation which is why the friars went out to hunt down and lasso the deserters and...

Write what should not be forgotten.

Tú eres tu propio enemigo, Ryan. Empieza por perdonarte, si no te perdonas vas a vivir siempre prisionero del pasado, castigado por la memoria, que es subjetiva.

I don’t read thrillers, romance or mystery, and I don’t read self-help books because I don’t believe in shortcuts and loopholes.

Every life of a character is within a context. If I write detached from a social and political background, my story looks like a soap opera where everybody is indoors, not working and living off...

If I didn’t write my soul would dry up and die.

I have written about Chile extensively, and therefore I have read many books on the subject, mostly for research.

Mis más trágicos recuerdos se levantaron en furioso oleaje. Creía que después de pasar por la experiencia de perderte ya nada podía afectarme demasiado, pero la mínima posibilidad de que algo semejante le ocurriera al...

Nothing changes; we humans repeat the same sins over and over, eternally.

Heart is what drives us and determines our fate. That is what I need for my characters in my books: a passionate heart. I need mavericks, dissidents, adventurers, outsiders and rebels, who ask questions, bend...

In 2011, I announced that I was going to retire, and my agent panicked. So she says: ‘No, no, no. You have to write a book with your husband.’ My husband is a writer of...

Everything that has to do with food is sensuous. In the United States, however, we are eating all the time. We have a problem with obesity. And yet, we don’t enjoy food that much.

He was not oppressed by a crowd because in the midst of all the hullabaloo he always found a quiet place for his soul.

our demons lose their power when we pull them out of the depths where they hide and look them in the face in broad daylight.

A memoir forces me to stop and remember carefully. It is an exercise in truth. In a memoir, I look at myself, my life, and the people I love the most in the mirror of...

If I had to choose between a relative and a good story, I would take the story.

Empowering women means trusting them.

I write a letter to my mother every day, because in that letter, I write down my day. And if I don’t write it down, then tomorrow I will forget it and it’s gone.

Of all fragrances, the sweetest is that of virtue.

Writing is like making love. Don’t worry about the orgasm, just concentrate on the process.

How accommodating love is; it forgives everything.

Feminism is not dead, by no means. It has evolved. If you don’t like the term, change it, for Goddess’ sake. Call it Aphrodite, or Venus, or bimbo, or whatever you want; the name doesn’t...

I never had time to think about my beliefs until my 28-year-old daughter Paula fell ill. She was in a coma for a year, and I took care of her at home until she died...

It is in giving that I connect with others, with the world and with the divine.

I remember my childhood as a horrible time. My mother says that nothing so horrible ever happened to me as the things that I remember.

This was a matter of some small group of guerrillas in some distant caves, a primitive, fanatical, and desperate people who didn’t have the resources to intimidate the United States.

I never said I wanted a ‘happy’ life but an interesting one. From separation and loss, I have learned a lot. I have become strong and resilient, as is the case of almost every human...

All stories interest me, and some haunt me until I end up writing them. Certain themes keep coming up: justice, loyalty, violence, death, political and social issues, freedom.

My mother is a great artist, but she always treated her paintings like minor postcards. Had she pursued it, she would have been a great artist. Instead, she looked down on her art.

If I can write it, I can cope. And I’ve been writing many books, but in every book, I try to explore something in my own soul that I need to solve, I need to...

I’ve been so thoroughly incorporated into the California culture that I practice meditation and go to a therapist, even though I always set a trap: during my meditation I invent stories to keep from being...

For women, the best aphrodisiacs are words. The G-spot is in the ears. He who looks for it below there is wasting his time.

​Courage is a virtue appreciated in a male but considered a defect in our gender. Bold women are a threat to a world that is badly out of balance, in favor of men.