You are told that you have to eliminate un-useful sentences, but as a writer you know how important details are.

I am still trying to find out things. And I inevitably tell myself the story in different ways every time I think about it.

For me, writing is a way of finding out about things I didn't know before I began writing.

The stories on standardized tests don't have one author, therefore they can never authentically be in the first person. Imagine that! Everywhere, there are these tests that have been written by multiple people.

Literature is about getting in touch. It sounds so hippie, but it really is about sharing stuff. We are a community that doesn't seem to be important for the rest of society, but we are people who want to get in touch - really in touch. We want to be thinking together.

You're looking for something, I don't know what I'm looking for, but I'm looking. Writing is a lot about that. When you write a poem. When you write a novel.

I think about Chilean literature as a family, because I grew up reading the literature of my country. I feel like I have fathers and stepfathers and a lot of brothers and sisters and distant cousins and all that.