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

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" 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. "

" I like Hillary Clinton a lot. I know her. "

Hillary Clinton

" The longest, most solid and complex relationship in my life is with my mother. It started before I was born, and now, when I am 71 and living in California and she is 92 and living in Chile, we are still in touch daily. "

" 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. "

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

" My desk is like a 'U,' so I have my computer and lots of dictionaries because I write in Spanish and I live in English. "

" I tend to see the similarities in people and not the differences. "

" If you change the way you tell your own story, you can change the colour and create a life in technicolour. "

" 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. "

" In 2011, I announced that I was going to retire, and my agent panicked. So she says: 'No, no, no. You have to write a book with your husband.' My husband is a writer of crime novels. His name is William Gordon. And so I had to accommodate to his style because that's what he writes. So we decided we'd give it a try. Well, we almost divorced. "

" I write to understand my circumstances, to sort out the confusion of reality, to exorcise my demons. But most of all, I write because I love it! "

" My father left when I was three, and I have no memory of him. The most significant male figures in my life were my grandfather, in whose house I lived during the first 10 years of my childhood, and later my stepfather. "

" A memoir forces me to stop and remember carefully. It is an exercise in truth. In a memoir, I look at myself, my life, and the people I love the most in the mirror of the blank screen. In a memoir, feelings are more important than facts, and to write honestly, I have to confront my demons. "

" I have not changed; I am still the same girl I was fifty years ago and the same young woman I was in the seventies. I still lust for life, I am still ferociously independent, I still crave justice, and I fall madly in love easily. "

" I try to write the kind of books I like to read. "

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

" 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. "

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

" 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 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. "

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

" My mother didn't want me to be a feminist, a radical, political person, because she was scared. She wanted me to be protected and safe, but my life never was. "

" 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. "

" 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 can't control life for my grandchildren, so how could I control a story? Sometimes I try to force something, and after working and working on that chapter, I realise that I am swimming against the current. I will never get there. So I have to let go of whatever previous idea I had about it and let the characters decide. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" I think that any writer who is commercial, who sells a lot of books, has to face criticism. Because the more hermetic and the more difficult your book is, supposedly it's better. "

" 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. "

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