We rely too much on the people we share our lives with. We hold them responsible for things they are not even aware of. We start blaming them.

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

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.

I knew little, but at least I knew that: no one could speak for someone else. That although we might want to tell other people's stories, we always end up telling our own.

Everything has been said and everything has been done, but you still feel like you are looking for something.

The ways in which a standardized language test induces storytelling, for example, is the opposite of creative writing; you have to learn a logical way to start a story, whereas in creative writing you may begin at the end or begin at the middle of the story.