The fact people think that when you sell a lot of books you are not a serious writer is a great insult to the readership. I get a little angry when people try to say such a thing.

If I had to choose between a relative and a good story, I would take the story.

I get up every morning early, when the sky is red, and write for 10 hours.

I want to have an epic life. I want to tell my life with big adjectives. I want to forget all the grays in between, and remember the highlights and the dark moments.

We don’t even know how strong we are until we are forced to bring that hidden strength forward. In times of tragedy, of war, of necessity, people do amazing things. The human capacity for survival and renewal is awesome.

A memoir is an invitation into another person‘s privacy.

There is no light without shadow, just as there is no happiness without pain.

Words are not that important when you recognize intentions.

I feel that telling my secrets makes me less vulnerable. What would make me vulnerable are the secrets I keep.

The fact that I am a writer comes from the experience of being cut away from my roots and living in Venezuela, where I couldn’t find a place for myself, for years and years.

All stories interest me, and some haunt me until I end up writing them. Certain themes keep coming up: justice, loyalty, violence, death, political and social issues, freedom.

A man who cooks is very sexy. A woman who cooks is not that sexy. Because it’s associated in our mind to the domestic cliche of the woman.

One of the things that always comes up in my writing is the search for freedom, especially in women. I always write about women who are marginalized, who have no means or resources and somehow manage to get out of those situations with incredible strength – and that is more important than anything.

Kids are smart: don’t underestimate their bull detector. Contemporary kids have access to a lot of information, so don’t even try to fool them. I have never been more nervous about my research than when writing for young adults because they pick up every single error.

In the United States, the fact that you can start again gives a lot of energy and strength and youth to this country. That is why it’s so powerful in many ways, and so creative.

At five I was already a feminist, and nobody used the word in Chile yet.

Men’s memoirs are about answers; women’s memoirs are about questions. Most male authors want to look good in their memoirs and have a place in posterity, while most women know that posterity is what happens when you no longer care. Women want to connect with others here and now; they couldn’t care less about legacy!

I can promise you that women working together – linked, informed and educated – can bring peace and prosperity to this forsaken planet.

Women have always been courageous… They are always fearless when protecting their children and in the last century they have been fearless in the fight for their rights.

I’m a writer. In Latin America, they say I’m a Latin-American writer because I also write in Spanish and my books are translated, but I am an American citizen and my books are published here, so I’m also an American writer.

The world starts to exist, for Americans, when we are in conflict with a place. And then all of a sudden, Afghanistan pops up on the TV screen and it becomes a place. And it exists for three weeks, and then it disappears into thin air.

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.

My life is about ups and downs, great joys and great losses.

I never thought that I would come to live in the United States. I was not pursuing the American dream.

The fact that you own a gun and shoot to defend your life is a very American way of thinking.

All summer, I read fiction because you must read for the pleasure and beauty of it, and not only for research. I don’t read thrillers, romance or mystery, and I don’t read self-help books because I don’t believe in shortcuts and loopholes.

Writing is a calling, not a choice.

Heart is what drives us and determines our fate.

I have been a woman for 46 years and I only recently realized I can’t change it and I like it.

I am an American citizen and it is my home now. I like the U.S.A., which is not a place too many people have liked since Bush. The U.S. has a young population, and everything can change within a year.

I don’t read thrillers, romance or mystery, and I don’t read self-help books because I don’t believe in shortcuts and loopholes.

I was born in ancient times, at the end of the world, in a patriarchal Catholic and conservative family. No wonder that by age five I was a raging feminist – although the term had not reached Chile yet, so nobody knew what the heck was wrong with me.

I am happier when I love than when I am loved. I adore my husband, my son, my grandchildren, my mother, my dog, and frankly, I don’t know if they even like me. But who cares? Loving them is my joy.

Feminism is not dead, by no means. It has evolved. If you don’t like the term, change it, for Goddess‘ sake. Call it Aphrodite, or Venus, or bimbo, or whatever you want; the name doesn’t matter, as long as we understand what it is about, and we support it.

I have been a foreigner all my life, first as a daughter of diplomats, then as a political refugee and now as an immigrant in the U.S. I have had to leave everything behind and start anew several times, and I have lost most of my extended family.

Unfortunately for my family, they have a writer in the family.

Twittering and blogging and all that is fine, but there is no idea of how to phrase something beautifully; how to use language to create an emotion. It’s just passing information and sometimes very superficial information.

I try to let go of the intellect and just tell the story. I only read the page I have in front of me on the screen. Then when the whole story is told, I print it, wait a week and read it.

You are my angel and my damnation; in your presence I reach divine ecstasy and in your absence I descent to hell.

I read on my iPad when I travel. I listen to audiobooks in the car. I read books in my bedroom, where I have a comfortable couch, a lamp and two dogs to keep me warm.

I have learned many things in the 30 years that I have been writing.

I rebelled against all form of authority, against my grandfather, my step-father, the Church, the police, the government, the bosses. Everything male that was there, and was determining my life.

I was a political refugee living in Venezuela. I had a job that was twelve hours a day, no money. It was a hard time.

You couldn’t find two people more different than my mother and I. There are a thousand things about me that she fought against.

Fear is like a black cavern that is terrifying. Once you enter the cavern and explore it, you realize that you can get out of it, go through it and get out of it.

My mother is a great artist, but she always treated her paintings like minor postcards. Had she pursued it, she would have been a great artist. Instead, she looked down on her art.

It is in giving that I connect with others, with the world and with the divine.

I don’t think the world will destroy itself in a nuclear cataclysm. On the contrary, we have the capacity to save ourselves and save the planet, and we will use it.

I write a letter to my mother every day, because in that letter, I write down my day. And if I don’t write it down, then tomorrow I will forget it and it’s gone.

Americans have a warrior‘s mentality, most of them. That’s how this society was built. The fact that you own a gun and shoot to defend your life is a very American way of thinking.

I was not supposed to be in any way a liberated person. I was a female born in the ’40s in a patriarchal family; I was supposed to marry and make everyone around me happy.

From journalism I learned to write under pressure, to work with deadlines, to have limited space and time, to conduct and interview, to find information, to research, and above all, to use language as efficiently as possible and to remember always that there is a reader out there.

I was a lousy journalist. I could never be objective. Sometimes I invented the whole story.

Everything that has to do with food is sensuous. In the United States, however, we are eating all the time. We have a problem with obesity. And yet, we don’t enjoy food that much.

We don’t have an explanation for everything that happens. We don’t control almost anything. And if we are not open to that mystery, life becomes so small.

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

Most people feel younger than their age, but the culture values youth, success, beauty, productivity. There is no space in this culture for older people.

I remember my childhood as a horrible time. My mother says that nothing so horrible ever happened to me as the things that I remember.

I’m very optimistic because I think that the real strength of a nation like the United States comes from blending cultures. There’s no way that you can close the frontiers anywhere. The borders are there to be violated permanently.

One of the characteristics of North American culture is that you can always start again. You can always move forward, cross a border of a state or a city or a county, and move West, most of the time West. You leave behind guilt, past traditions, memories.

I get thousands of letters, and they give me a feeling of how each book is perceived. Often I think I have written about a certain theme, but by reading the letters or reviews, I realise that everybody sees the book differently.

The poorest and most backward societies are always those that put women down.

A memoir is my version of events. My perspective. I choose what to tell and what to omit. I choose the adjectives to describe a situation, and in that sense, I’m creating a form of fiction.

I have lived with passion and in a hurry, trying to accomplish too many things. I never had time to think about my beliefs until my 28-year-old daughter Paula fell ill. She was in a coma for a year, and I took care of her at home until she died in my arms in December of 1992.

If I can write it, I can cope. And I’ve been writing many books, but in every book, I try to explore something in my own soul that I need to solve, I need to understand.

I have more freedom when I write fiction, but my memoirs have had a much stronger impact on my readers. Somehow the ‘message,’ even if I am not even aware that there is one, is conveyed better in this form.

Eros is very close to death. And both things, in a way, balance each other.

What I fear most is power with impunity. I fear abuse of power, and the power to abuse.

My writing comes not from the happy moments, but from struggle and grief.

You are the storyteller of your own life, and you can create your own legend, or not.

I was such a sullen, angry, sad kid. I’m sure there are writers who have had happy childhoods, but what are you going to write about? No ghosts, no fear. I’m very happy that I had an unhappy and uncomfortable childhood.

I never try to give a message in my books. It’s about living with characters long enough to hear their voices and let them tell me the story. Sometimes I would love to have a happy ending, and it doesn’t happen because the character or the story leads me in another direction.

I never try to convey a message, I just want to tell a story. Why that story in particular? I have no idea, but I have learned to surrender to the muse. I become obsessed with a theme or with certain stories; they haunt me for years, and finally, I write them.

The first lie of fiction is that the author gives some order to the chaos of life: chronological order, or whatever order the author chooses.

I’ve been a story-teller all my life but I realized it only recently.

Everybody has losses – it’s unavoidable in life. Sharing our pain is very healing.

I don’t think I would be a writer if I had stayed in Chile. I would be trapped in the chores, in the family, in the person that people expected me to be.

We all have an unsuspected reserve of strength inside that emerges when life puts us to the test.

In times of conflict, war, poverty or religious fundamentalism, women and children are the first and most numerous victims. Women need all their courage today.

Life is very mysterious and there are many things we don’t know. And there are elements of magic realism in every culture, everywhere. It’s just accepting that we don’t know everything and everything is possible.