I have been a woman for 46 years and I only recently realized I can't change it and I like it.

It's such an intimate and profound relationship that it cannot be unconditional. I can only compare the intimacy of sex with the intimacy of the mother with a newborn baby. But with a newborn baby, it is unconditional.

I'm not above anybody. I'm, I'm not better than anybody. I am made of the same material that everybody else is and if somebody can be a saint, so can I and if somebody can be a torturer, so can I.

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 feel that my life and therefore my writing accept the possibility of all the mystery. Everything we don't know; everything that can possibly happen.

Accept the children the way we accept trees—with gratitude, because they are a blessing—but do not have expectations or desires. You don’t expect trees to change, you love them as they are.

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