One can't fight with oneself, for this battle has only one loser.

If you are killed because you are a writer, that's the maximum expression of respect, you know.

The writer’s job is to write with rigor, with commitment, to defend what they believe with all the talent they have. I think that’s part of the moral obligation of a writer, which cannot be only purely artistic. I think a writer has some kind of responsibility at least to participate in the civic debate. I think literature is impoverished, if it becomes cut from the main agenda of people, of society, of life.

I was very young and lived with my grandparents in a villa with white walls in the Calle Ocharan, in Miraflores.

One can't fight with oneself, for this battle has only one loser.

The secret to a masterpiece is 10 percent inspiration and 90 percent perspiration.

I learned to read at the age of five, in Brother Justiniano's class at the De la Salle Academy in Cochabamba, Bolivia. It is the most important thing that has ever happened to me. Almost seventy years later I remember clearly how the magic of translating the words in books into images enriched my life, breaking the barriers of time and space.