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

Young women don't want to be called feminists because it's not sexy and ah they think that their mothers and grandmothers have achieved everything they want. They don't know how poor women live, how women in rural places live, how 80 percent of women in the world are the poorest of the poor, how still there are 27 million slaves, and most of them women and girls.

Youth is not a period in life but a state of mind.

I come from the so-called Third World (what is the Second)?

Every person is born with a talent, and happiness depends on discovering that talent in time.

My grandfather was dying, and told the family he had decided to die. ... At that moment I wanted so badly to write and tell him that he was never going to die, that somehow he would always be present in my life, because he had a theory that death didn't exist, only forgetfulness did. He believed that if you can keep people in your memory, they will live forever. That's what he did with my grandmother.

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