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

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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 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. "

" 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. "

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

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

Working Together

" 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. "

" Writing is my job. I don't think of it as art. "

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

" I speak English and Spanish. I write in Spanish; my books are published in English. "

" I never said I wanted a 'happy' life but an interesting one. From separation and loss, I have learned a lot. I have become strong and resilient, as is the case of almost every human being exposed to life and to the world. We don't even know how strong we are until we are forced to bring that hidden strength forward. "

" If I didn't write my soul would dry up and die. "

" 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. "

" Heart is what drives us and determines our fate. "

" Feminism is dated? Yes, for privileged women like my daughter and all of us here today, but not for most of our sisters in the rest of the world who are still forced into premature marriage, prostitution, forced labor - they have children that they don't want or they cannot feed. "

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

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

" 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. "

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

" 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 media could do a much better job, that's for sure, especially the media that targets women... Human rights? They couldn't care less! "

" 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. "