I was born in ancient times, at the end of the world, in a patriarchal Catholic and conservative family. No wonder that by age five I was a raging feminist - although the term had not reached Chile yet, so nobody knew what the heck was wrong with me.

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'm surrounded by young people. I'm always now the oldest and the shortest person in the room.

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.

Women are the only ones who will be able to eliminate the patriarchy, and when that happens all of us will win, men as much as women.

More and more books are published every year. If people were not reading them, they wouldn't be published. We are in a different moment. We are now reading electronic books or whatever else, but people are still reading, and people still need stories.

He was not oppressed by a crowd because in the midst of all the hullabaloo he always found a quiet place for his soul.