I live quietly at home among my family and friends...

Literature for me isn't a workaday job, but something which involves desires, dreams and fantasy.

My job is to look at what politics is doing, not be a politician myself.

Literature is my life of course, but from an ontological point of view. From an existential point of view, I like being a teacher.

As you age naturally, your family shows more and more on your face. If you deny that, you deny your heritage.

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.

My inspiration was my mom. She's a great cook, and she still cooks, and we still banter back and forth about cooking. Growing up in a mostly Portuguese community, food was important and the family table was extremely important. At a very young age I understood that.

In every age there has been a stream of popular opinion that has carried all before it, and given a family character, as it were, to the century.