All stories interest me, and some haunt me until I end up writing them. Certain themes keep coming up: justice, loyalty, violence, death, political and social issues, freedom.

You spend the first part of your life collecting things ... and the second half getting rid of them.

You can't find someone who doesn't want to be found.

Writing is my job. I don't think of it as art.

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.

I seek truth and beauty in the transparency of an autumn leaf, in the perfect form of a seashell on the beach, in the curve of a woman's back, in the texture of an ancient tree trunk, but also in the elusive forms of reality.

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.