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.

Memory is satisfied desire.

Migration is an opportunity, not a problem. And in the sense that it is an opportunity, it goes on to a bilateral agreement, between Mexico and the US, the US and the Dominican Republic, whatever you wish, and it has to be a multilateral, international event. I am in favor of an international union of migrant workers that really takes on the problems that affect Europe, with the migrants coming from Africa, and the US with the migrants coming from Latin America. It has to be considered an international question, with international solutions, and with no problems national or international.

Contrary to the macho culture of Mexico, both my grandmothers were very brave young widows. I was always very close to these hard-working, intelligent women.

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.

Mexico is a very complex, mysterious country. I will never understand it fully, and that's why I write so much about it, in order to try to understand it.

Diplomacy in a sense is the opposite of writing. You have to disperse yourself so much: the lady who comes in crying because shes had a fight with the secretary; exports and imports; students in trouble; thumbtacks for the embassy.