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.

When I was young, when I started to write, we were totally convinced that literature was a kind of weapon.

A novel which persuades us of its truth is true however full of lies it may be

Reading was such an enrichment of my life. And it was that pleasure that I had as a very young reader probably that is the origin of my vocation.

Memory is a snare, pure and simple; it alters, it subtly rearranges the past to fit the present.

I write because I'm unhappy. I write because it's a way of fighting unhappiness.

We must mistrust utopias: they usually end in holocausts.