Dying is not easy. It's a very hard transition.

...a fixation is very stubborn: it burrows into the brain and breaks the heart. There are many fixations, but love is the worst.

Land is something one should never sell. It is the only thing left when all else is gone

I learned very quickly that when you emigrate, you lose the crutches that have been your support; you must begin from zero, because the past is erased with a single stroke and no one cares where you’re from or what you did before.

From journalism I learned to write under pressure, to work with deadlines, to have limited space and time, to conduct and interview, to find information, to research, and above all, to use language as efficiently as possible and to remember always that there is a reader out there.

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

I am very optimistic because I have seen the changes in my lifetime. I have seen the world change for the better. We always think that present times is terrible, that what's happening today, it was never worse, that the world is going in the most awful direction. But I think that the world that my grandchildren will have will be better than the one I had when I turned 20.