If, for example, I saw my grandparents or my daughter for an instant, would I recognize them? Probably not, because in looking so hard for a way to keep them alive, remembering them in the most minimal details, I have been changing them, adorning them with qualities they may not have had. I have given them a destiny much more complex than the ones they lived.

I have seen these persons speak unthinkingly, not realizing that to speak is also to be. Word and gesture are man's thought. We should not speak without reason.

Writers speak for those who are kept in silence

There's basically an element of fiction in everything you remember. Imagination and memory are almost the same brain processes. When I write fiction, I know that I'm using a bunch of lies that I've made up to create some form of truth. When I write a memoir, I'm using true elements to create something that will always be somehow fictionalized.

Write to register history, and name each thing. Write what should not be forgotten.

Feminism has never been sexy, but let me assure you that it never stopped me from flirting, and I have seldom suffered from lack of men.

Nations should be governed by a council of learned men who must answer to the people for their actions.