I rebelled against all form of authority, against my grandfather, my step-father, the Church, the police, the government, the bosses. Everything male that was there, and was determining my life.

The fact people think that when you sell a lot of books you are not a serious writer is a great insult to the readership. I get a little angry when people try to say...

Wishes and fears are illusions, Dil Bahadur, not realities. You must practice detachment.

Era ella quien se abría como una sandía madura, roja, jugosa, tibia, ella quien sudaba esa fragancia penetrante de mariscos, ella quien lo mordía, lo arañaba, lo chupaba, gemía, agonizaba de sofoco y de placer....

I can promise you that women working together – linked, informed and educated – can bring peace and prosperity to this forsaken planet.

A memoir is an invitation into another person’s privacy.

I have become an American citizen, and I love this country. I think that this country has incredible potential for goodness, an incredible possibility for doing the wrong thing, too.

A man who cooks is very sexy. A woman who cooks is not that sexy. Because it’s associated in our mind to the domestic cliche of the woman.

I have learned many things in the 30 years that I have been writing.

There is no death, daughter. People die only when we forget them,’ my mother explained shortly before she left me. ‘If you can remember me, I will be with you always.

Just as when we come into the world, when we die we are afraid of the unknown. But the fear is something from within us that has nothing to do with reality. Dying is like...

People do not belong to others, either. How can the huincas buy and sell people if they do not own them. Sometimes the boy went two or three days without speaking a word, surly, and...

My father left when I was three, and I have no memory of him. The most significant male figures in my life were my grandfather, in whose house I lived during the first 10 years...

All summer, I read fiction because you must read for the pleasure and beauty of it, and not only for research. I don’t read thrillers, romance or mystery, and I don’t read self-help books because...

I have more freedom when I write fiction, but my memoirs have had a much stronger impact on my readers. Somehow the ‘message,’ even if I am not even aware that there is one, is...

I was a very bad journalist. Awful. I would just invent everything. If I did an interview, I had a preconception of what that person should say and I would put my words in his...

Catholics form a majority in Chile, although there are more and more Evangelicals and Pentacostals who irritate everyone because they have a direct understanding with God while everyone else must pass through the priestly bureaucracy.

Pregúntate qué sientes y qué te niegas a sentir.

Giving women education, work, the ability to control their own income, inherit and own property, benefits the society. If a woman is empowered, her children and her family will be better off. If families prosper,...

Before the military coup in Chile, we had the idea that military coups happen in Banana Republics, somewhere in Central America. It would never happen in Chile. Chile was such a solid democracy. And when...

The world starts to exist, for Americans, when we are in conflict with a place. And then all of a sudden, Afghanistan pops up on the TV screen and it becomes a place. And it...

A man does what he can; a woman does what a man cannot.

As my Popo used to say, life is a tapestry we weave day by day with threads of different colors, some heavy and dark, others thin and bright, all the threads having their uses. The...

I want to have an epic life. I want to tell my life with big adjectives. I want to forget all the grays in between, and remember the highlights and the dark moments.

Everybody has losses – it’s unavoidable in life. Sharing our pain is very healing.

I write until the first draft is finished, and then I feel that I can get out. But, during the time of the writing of the first draft, I don’t go out. I’m just locked...

I feel that telling my secrets makes me less vulnerable. What would make me vulnerable are the secrets I keep.

I like Hillary Clinton a lot. I know her.

The two moments are much alike: birth and death are made of the same fabric.

Sadness and boredom were more bearable than the effort of living a normal life. Perhaps the idea of death began to hover over her during that period, as a kind of higher order of lassitude...

The calendar is a human invention; time does not exist on the spiritual level.

I was born in ancient times, at the end of the world, in a patriarchal Catholic and conservative family. No wonder that by age five I was a raging feminist – although the term had...

I love fiction because in fiction you go into the thoughts of people, the little people, the people who were defeated, the poor, the women, the children that are never in history books.

I am an American citizen and it is my home now. I like the U.S.A., which is not a place too many people have liked since Bush. The U.S. has a young population, and everything...

My mother didn’t want me to be a feminist, a radical, political person, because she was scared. She wanted me to be protected and safe, but my life never was.

Fear is inevitable, I have to accept that, but I cannot allow it to paralyze me.

Until a few months ago we had a code of honor, and even the worst ruffians behaved with decency. You could leave your gold in a tent with no guard and no one would touch...

I tend to see the similarities in people and not the differences.

Fear is like a black cavern that is terrifying. Once you enter the cavern and explore it, you realize that you can get out of it, go through it and get out of it.

When I write fiction, I never try to deliver a message; I just want to tell a story. But I admit that I want the story to be memorable and the characters to touch the...

Heroism is a badly remunerated occupation, and often it leads to an early end, which is why it appeals to fanatics or persons with an unhealthy fascination with death.

I can promise you that women working together – linked, informed and educated – can bring peace and prosperity to this forsaken planet.

If you change the way you tell your own story, you can change the colour and create a life in technicolour.

The first lie of fiction is that the author gives some order to the chaos of life: chronological order, or whatever order the author chooses.

For real change, we need feminine energy in the management of the world. We need a critical number of women in positions of power, and we need to nurture the feminine energy in men.

I have been a woman for 46 years and I only recently realized I can’t change it and I like it.

I’ve been a story-teller all my life but I realized it only recently.

You are my angel and my damnation; in your presence I reach divine ecstasy and in your absence I descent to hell.

Silence before being born, silence after death: life is nothing but noise between two unfathomable silences.

My death..I mean..will it be quick,and with dignity? How will i know when the end is coming?””When you vomit blood,sir,” Tao Chi’en said sadly.That happened three weeks later,in the middle of Pacific,in the privacy of...