People ask me why I am a feminist. Because I am a woman of freedom and equality and it is not possible to have freedom in the world when half of humanity has no rights. Because we are more than half of humanity. There are more women than men. This is not a fight of so-called "minorities."

As a journalist, I never isolated myself. I was a journalist at a daily newspaper and every day I went out on the street. Every day I had contact with people. I interviewed the most important writers of the twentieth century, and into the twenty-first century, from Simone de Beauvoir, Marguerite Duras, and Marguerite Yourcenar to Christa Wolf.

Men use women sexually. They use them, mistreat them, even from the point of view of vocabulary, the use of words. It baffles me.

I think the obligation of a poet is not to be in an ivory tower; it is not to be isolated but to be among people.

What do I think of Pussy Riot actions? The act can be extremely positive if it is an act to call attention to the fact that things in their country are really bad for women, otherwise it is purely a media event that only obfuscates women's struggle.

I think that one of the tasks of feminist women - mainly women of culture - in our time is to seek out those women who were only forgotten because they were women.

I think that all my books are political, I think that I have a political body of work. I am essentially a political woman, but above all I am a poet. I am a poetess.