Feminism has never been sexy, but let me assure you that it never stopped me from flirting, and I have seldom suffered from lack of men.

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.

My books are written from personal experience, from memories, and from stories that come to me from all places.

Boredom, Timothy Duane assured me, is nothing more than anger without passion.

I don't think I would be a writer if I had stayed in Chile. I would be trapped in the chores, in the family, in the person that people expected me to be.

Americans have a warrior's mentality, most of them. That's how this society was built. The fact that you own a gun and shoot to defend your life is a very American way of thinking.

I began to wonder whether anything truly existed, whether reality wasn't an unformed and gelatinous substance only half-captured by my senses....If that were true, each of us was living in absolute isolation. The thought terrified me. I was consoled by the idea that I could take that gelatin and mold it to create anything I wanted...At times I felt that the universe fabricated from the power of the imagination had stronger and more lasting contours than the blurred realm of the flesh-and-blood creatures around me.