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.

The connection that I have with my readers makes me very happy, and gives meaning to the strange profession of writing

Someone has said that conversation is sex for the soul.

Reading is like looking through several windows which open to an infinite landscape....For me life without reading would be like being in prison, it would be as if my spirit were in a straightjacket; life would be a very dark and narrow place.

What happens in the world affects me. Sometimes, that's part of the writing.

If you change the way you tell your own story, you can change the colour and create a life in technicolour.

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.