I am very optimistic because I have seen the changes in my lifetime. I have seen the world change for the better. We always think that present times is terrible, that what's happening today, it was never worse, that the world is going in the most awful direction. But I think that the world that my grandchildren will have will be better than the one I had when I turned 20.

The library is inhabited by spirits that come out of the pages at night.

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.

It's going to go away because we all need silence. We all need time to reflect and think. I am not at all pessimistic about this.

far away from my country I would be like those trees they chop down at Christmastime, those poor rootless pines that last a little while and then die.

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.

I never said I wanted a 'happy' life but an interesting one. From separation and loss, I have learned a lot. I have become strong and resilient, as is the case of almost every human being exposed to life and to the world. We don't even know how strong we are until we are forced to bring that hidden strength forward.