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.

Women have always been courageous… They are always fearless when protecting their children and in the last century they have been fearless in the fight for their rights.

My writing comes not from the happy moments, but from struggle and grief.

I like historical fiction. I fell in love with New Orleans the first time I visited it. And I wanted to place a story in New Orleans.

The longest, most solid and complex relationship in my life is with my mother. It started before I was born, and now, when I am 71 and living in California and she is 92 and...

Medía su felicidad con una fórmula elemental: «Un buen día más otro buen día igual a una buena vida».

My worst flaw is that I tell secrets, my own and everybody else’s.

write with honesty and don’t worry about the feelings of others, because no matter what you say, they’ll hate you anyway.

I can’t control life for my grandchildren, so how could I control a story? Sometimes I try to force something, and after working and working on that chapter, I realise that I am swimming against...

I was not supposed to be in any way a liberated person. I was a female born in the ’40s in a patriarchal family; I was supposed to marry and make everyone around me happy.

The fact that you own a gun and shoot to defend your life is a very American way of thinking.

I try to write the kind of books I like to read.

He hoped that none of his descendants would get mixed up in politics, which was a trade for butchers and bandits.

We don’t even know how strong we are until we are forced to bring that hidden strength forward. In times of tragedy, of war, of necessity, people do amazing things. The human capacity for survival...

I write to understand my circumstances, to sort out the confusion of reality, to exorcise my demons. But most of all, I write because I love it!

One of the things that always comes up in my writing is the search for freedom, especially in women. I always write about women who are marginalized, who have no means or resources and somehow...

If you write nonfiction, a historical account of what really happened, first of all, it’s always white men who do that, and you don’t have the voices that are really interesting to me, of the...

[D]ie Leute [lesen] nichts, was sie nicht interessiert, und wenn sie etwas interessier[t], [sind] sie auch reif dafür.

At times I feel as if I had lived all this before and that I have already written these very words, but I know it was not I: it was another woman, who kept her...

I have seen these persons speak unthinkingly, not realizing that to speak is also to be. Word and gesture are man’s thought. We should not speak without reason.

I confess that I am a messy, disorganized and impatient reader: if the book doesn’t grab me in the first 40 pages, I abandon it. I have piles of half-read books waiting for me to...

I was a political refugee living in Venezuela. I had a job that was twelve hours a day, no money. It was a hard time.

At five I was already a feminist, and nobody used the word in Chile yet.

The media could do a much better job, that’s for sure, especially the media that targets women… Human rights? They couldn’t care less!

La vida se hace caminando sin mapa y no hay forma de volver atrás.

Literary characters, like my grandmother’s apparitions, are fragile beings, easily frightened; they must be treated with care so they will feel comfortable in my pages

I’d realized that in writing happiness is useless-without suffering there is no story.

I read on my iPad when I travel. I listen to audiobooks in the car. I read books in my bedroom, where I have a comfortable couch, a lamp and two dogs to keep me...

In times of conflict, war, poverty or religious fundamentalism, women and children are the first and most numerous victims. Women need all their courage today.

Today’s girls are tomorrow’s women – and leaders.

You couldn’t find two people more different than my mother and I. There are a thousand things about me that she fought against.

He said that knowledge was of little use without wisdom, and that there was no wisdom without spirituality, and that true spirituality always included service to others. As he explained many times, the essence of...

I am happier when I love than when I am loved. I adore my husband, my son, my grandchildren, my mother, my dog, and frankly, I don’t know if they even like me. But who...

The pain of losing my child was a cleansing experience. I had to throw overboard all excess baggage and keep only what is essential.

The fact that I am a writer comes from the experience of being cut away from my roots and living in Venezuela, where I couldn’t find a place for myself, for years and years.

In the books I have written, I have created in my mind a universe. My kids say I have a village in my head and I live in that village, and it’s true. When I...

Jamie aveva orrore di qualsiasi forma di estremismo e sosteneva che i guerriglieri si giustificano solo durante la tirannia, quando non c’è altra scelta che battersi con le armi, ma che sono un’aberrazione in un...