I like historical fiction. I fell in love with New Orleans the first time I visited it. And I wanted to place a story in New Orleans.

Nations should be governed by a council of learned men who must answer to the people for their actions.

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.

I'm living in California but I have a place that is mine in Chile and I belong there. I am no longer an exile.

Most people feel younger than their age, but the culture values youth, success, beauty, productivity. There is no space in this culture for older people.

One of the characteristics of North American culture is that you can always start again. You can always move forward, cross a border of a state or a city or a county, and move West, most of the time West. You leave behind guilt, past traditions, memories. You are as if born again, in the sense of the snake: You leave your skin behind and you begin again. For most people in the world, that is totally impossible.

They could not understand the advantage of living contrary to their inclinations in this world in order to enjoy a hypothetical well-being in another.