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.

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...

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...

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...

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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...

I have not changed; I am still the same girl I was fifty years ago and the same young woman I was in the seventies. I still lust for life, I am still ferociously independent,...

One of the characteristics of North American culture is that you can always start again. You can always move forward, cross a border of a state or a city or a county, and move West,...

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.

La verdadera amistad resiste el tiempo, la distancia y el silencio.

I strike the ground with the soles of my feet and life rises up my legs, spreads up my skeleton, takes possession of me, drives away distress and sweetens my memory. The world trembles.

We want a world where life is preserved, and the quality of life is enriched for everybody, not only for the privileged.

I don’t think I would be a writer if I had stayed in Chile. I would be trapped in the chores, in the family, in the person that people expected me to be.

I have travelled all over the world and one thing that amazes me is that I can communicate with people. My story may be different but emotionally we are all the same.

She regretted nothing she had shared with her lover, nor was she ashamed of the fires that had changed her life; just the opposite, she felt that they had tempered her, made her strong, given...

Accept the children the way we accept trees—with gratitude, because they are a blessing—but do not have expectations or desires. You don’t expect trees to change, you love them as they are.

From journalism I learned to write under pressure, to work with deadlines, to have limited space and time, to conduct and interview, to find information, to research, and above all, to use language as efficiently...

Feminism has never been sexy, but let me assure you that it never stopped me from flirting, and I have seldom suffered from lack of men.

I try to let go of the intellect and just tell the story. I only read the page I have in front of me on the screen. Then when the whole story is told, I...

I get thousands of letters, and they give me a feeling of how each book is perceived. Often I think I have written about a certain theme, but by reading the letters or reviews, I...