My female protagonist will not be this promiscuous, beautiful, dark-haired, thin lady. It will be a plump, blond, healer and so forth.

Be careful what you ask of Heaven; it might be granted.

I was not supposed to be in any way a liberated person. I was a female born in the '40s in a patriarchal family; I was supposed to marry and make everyone around me happy.

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.

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.

The first two, three, four weeks are wasted. I just show up in front of the computer. Show up, show up, show up, and after a while the muse shows up, too. If she doesn't show up invited, eventually she just shows up.

I don't want to die in pain or in an undignified way, I don't want any of the people I love to die in, die painfully. But I'm aware of the fact that they may die before I do and I have to part with them and take the loss. The hardest thing of love is to let go. But I think I can get let go of almost anybody.