far away from my country I would be like those trees they chop down at Christmastime, those poor rootless pines that last a little while and then die.

I'm not a fan of mysteries, so to prepare for this experience of writing a mystery I started reading the most successful ones in the market in 2012. And I realized I cannot write that kind of book. It's too gruesome, too violent, too dark; there's no redemption there.

When you make an omelet, as when you make love, affection counts for more than technique.

I can promise you that women working together - linked, informed and educated - can bring peace and prosperity to this forsaken planet.

If, for example, I saw my grandparents or my daughter for an instant, would I recognize them? Probably not, because in looking so hard for a way to keep them alive, remembering them in the most minimal details, I have been changing them, adorning them with qualities they may not have had. I have given them a destiny much more complex than the ones they lived.

A book is not an end in itself; it is only a way to touch someone - a bridge extended across a space of loneliness and obscurity - and sometimes it is a way of winning other people to our causes.

Literary characters, like my grandmother's apparitions, are fragile beings, easily frightened; they must be treated with care so they will feel comfortable in my pages