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.

Writing is my job. I don't think of it as art.

I have a very acute sense of place and time, so all of my stories are rooted in a place and a time.

Only in romance novels or in thrillers people live outside of a social and political context.

Cooking can be like foreplay.

The last time I was in Chile, I was hypnotized by a friend who is studying to be a curandero, a healer, who led me back through several incarnations. It wasn't easy to return to the present, however, since my friend hadn't reached that part of the course, but the experiment was well worth the effort because I discovered that in former lives I was not Genghis Khan, as my mother believes.

Women have always been courageous... They are always fearless when protecting their children and in the last century they have been fearless in the fight for their rights.