Empowering women means trusting them.

The first lie of fiction is that the author gives some order to the chaos of life: chronological order, or whatever order the author chooses.

After fifty most of the bullshit is gone.

I'm very optimistic because I think that the real strength of a nation like the United States comes from blending cultures. There's no way that you can close the frontiers anywhere. The borders are there to be violated permanently.

I am very grateful for the success, because it has given me the freedom to write without pressure, in my own way, and has enabled me to maintain my family and educate my children and grandchildren, as well as to create a Foundation to empower women and girls.

Although women do two-thirds of the world's labor, they own less than one percent of the world's assets.

I do not put myself in a box and say, for instance, I'm writing post-colonial literature. I don't know what I'm writing. That's the business of professors and critics. My job is to tell a story, and that's it.