Heart is what drives us and determines our fate. That is what I need for my characters in my books: a passionate heart. I need mavericks, dissidents, adventurers, outsiders and rebels, who ask questions, bend the rules and take risks.

Writing is like making love. Don't worry about the orgasm, just concentrate on the process.

Roots are not in landscape or a country, or a people, they are inside you.

No complaining about how hard it is to write, we are all so, so lucky to write, to sit down, inside, and write words on paper. There is no greater freedom, no greater good, nothing that brings more joy.

There's basically an element of fiction in everything you remember. Imagination and memory are almost the same brain processes. When I write fiction, I know that I'm using a bunch of lies that I've made up to create some form of truth. When I write a memoir, I'm using true elements to create something that will always be somehow fictionalized.

I'm interested in people who have to overcome obstacles, people who are not sheltered by the umbrella of the establishment, marginals.

Fear is inevitable, I have to accept that, but I cannot allow it to paralyze me.