I completely believe that - literature for me is a way of life. That's probably true of all writers or all artists. I think in the end this kind of activity absorbs one in such a way that it becomes one's way of life.

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.

Journalism is a way of voicing opinion, of participating in the political, social, or cultural debate.

I have been always fascinated and seduced by history, which I think is very close, very close to literature.

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

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

Once upon a time, there was a boy who learned to read at the age of 5. This changed his life. Owing to the adventure tales he read, he discovered a way to escape from the poor house, the poor country, and the poor reality in which he lived.