Characters simply come and find me. They sit down, I offer them a coffee. They tell me their story and then they almost always leave. When a character, after drinking some coffee and briefly telling her story, wants dinner and then a place to sleep and then breakfast and so on, for me the time has come to write the novel.
Dacia MarainiWhile on the level of civil rights many things have changed decisively for the better, on the level of attitudes and mentality there's still a long way to go. On the other hand it's obvious that it's much easier to change a law than to change a way of thinking.
Dacia MarainiWhen I look around me, I see mostly women who are alone, left by their husbands after their kids grew up, for a younger woman, which is the most common thing, or suddenly abandoned after getting married and left with young children.
Dacia MarainiA woman has to demonstrate in every moment to be thirty times better than a man, to gain trust and to be considered. So, she has to be tenacious, combattative but not aggressive, she has to love her work a lot and not let herself be discouraged by the daily discriminiation she encounters.
Dacia Maraini