Mining created Chile. The story of men who go down into the mountain and chip away at minerals in the darkness and then suffer an accident that leaves them at the mercy of that darkness is part of the DNA of Chile, an integral part of the country's history.

Life may unfold chronologically for the body and for bureaucracies that keep track of such things as births, marriages, deaths, visas, tax returns, expulsions, and identity cards, but memory does not play this game in quite the same way, always manages to confound the desire for tidiness.

I feel as if I can take Indian stories, make them mine and take them to the world.

There's a tendency, especially among revolutionaries, to only show the good side of yourself and then when you come to power, the bad side comes out.

This America has been the country of greed rather than the country of need.

Most writers who leave their country physically have already left it mentally and emotionally.

Those who have never suffered the iniquities of exile cannot possibly understand the significance, the gravitas, of a mattress.