The new world economic order is not an exercise in philanthropy, but in enlightened self-interest for everyone concerned.

Don't classify me, read me. I'm a writer, not a genre.

No, it's not that they're bad. It's that they're obliged to pretend they're good. They've been brought up to deceive and be cunning, to protect themselves from our society. I don't want to be like that.

I don't think any good book is based on factual experience. Bad books are about things the writer already knew before he wrote them.

Love can isolate us from everything around us. But in its absence, we can be filled with the fear that something comparable exists.

Death is the great Maecenas, Death is the great angel of writing. You must write because you are not going to live any more.

Anything would be better in the US than what you have. As a government it's really very low quality, given the fact that this country produces eminent intellectuals, has great universities, and then the people who arrive in government are very mediocre. The Latin American situation has been very different in the first place, because writers have spoken for those who have no voice. The rate of illiteracy, poverty, joblessness in Latin America has been so great throughout our history that if the writers didn't speak out for the people, nobody would.