In times of conflict, war, poverty or religious fundamentalism, women and children are the first and most numerous victims. Women need all their courage today.

I am an American citizen and it is my home now. I like the USA, which is not a place too many people have liked since Bush. The US has a young population, and everything can change within a year.

I don't read thrillers, romance or mystery, and I don't read self-help books because I don't believe in shortcuts and loopholes.

My son, the Holy Church is on the right, but Jesus Christ was always on the left.

People think that they will sit down and produce the great American novel in one sitting. It doesn't work that way. This is a very patient and meticulous work, and you have to do it with joy and love for the process, not for the outcome.

I don't think of literature as an end in itself. It's just a way of communicating something.

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.