I carry around a little stool to stand on when people want a picture with their cellular phones.

It's going to go away because we all need silence. We all need time to reflect and think. I am not at all pessimistic about this.

I'm surrounded by the scene of aging. I myself am in my 70s and not getting any younger. Although I'm very healthy, and I have a lot of energy, and I still feel 50, I'm over 70 and I understand that I am preparing for later.

I try desperately to conquer the transitory nature of my existence, to trap moments before they evenesce, to untangle the confusion of my past. Every instant disappears in a breath and immediately becomes the past; reality is ephemeral and changing, pure longing.

My books are based on emotions, feelings, relationships. In these areas women are experts, so it's not strange that the main characters of my novels are females.

far away from my country I would be like those trees they chop down at Christmastime, those poor rootless pines that last a little while and then die.

I need to tell a story. It's an obsession. Each story is a seed inside of me that starts to grow and grow, like a tumor, and I have to deal with it sooner or later.