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.

Love is a free contract that begins with a spark and can end the same way.

The success occurs in a place outside of me, and doesn't touch me on an intimate level. I live in my own skin, I have not changed greatly, I remain the same woman.

The first lie of fiction is that the author gives some order to the chaos of life: chronological order, or whatever order the author chooses.

After fifty most of the bullshit is gone.

Life is very mysterious and there are many things we don't know. And there are elements of magic realism in every culture, everywhere. It's just accepting that we don't know everything and everything is possible.

I learned very quickly that when you emigrate, you lose the crutches that have been your support; you must begin from zero, because the past is erased with a single stroke and no one cares where you’re from or what you did before.