I am very grateful for the success, because it has given me the freedom to write without pressure, in my own way, and has enabled me to maintain my family and educate my children and grandchildren, as well as to create a Foundation to empower women and girls.

It is absurd to imagine that any child will be able to earn a living, let alone contribute to resolving our world's complex problems, without knowing how to read and write. My foundation supports the National Writing Project so that teachers can be more effective in their efforts to improve literacy for all students.

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.

I come from the so-called Third World (what is the Second)?

All stories interest me, and some haunt me until I end up writing them.

Feminism is dated? Yes, for privileged women like my daughter and all of us here today, but not for most of our sisters in the rest of the world who are still forced into premature marriage, prostitution, forced labor - they have children that they don't want or they cannot feed.

In 2011, I announced that I was going to retire, and my agent panicked. So she says: No, no, no. You have to write a book with your husband.