Those who have never suffered the iniquities of exile cannot possibly understand the significance, the gravitas, of a mattress..

I think to be in exile is a curse, and you need to turn it into a blessing. Youve been thrown into exile to die, really, to silence you so that your ….

We can live with lots of things, but we can't live without imagination, we can't live without hope..

We live in the age of the refugee, the age of the exile..

You want to free the world, free humanity, from oppression? Look inside, look sideways, look at the hidden violence of language. Never forget that la….

Mining created Chile. The story of men who go down into the mountain and chip away at minerals in the darkness and then suffer an accident that leave….

You can survive with anger, but you can't live with it forever..

Can't the United States see that when we allow someone to be tortured by our agents, it is not only the victim and the perpetrator who are corrupted,….

There's a tendency, especially among revolutionaries, to only show the good side of yourself and then when you come to power, the bad side comes out..

Torture presupposes, it requires, it craves the abrogation of our capacity to imagine others suffering, dehumanizing them so much that their pain is ….

I don't believe in God, but I believe in angels..

Beware of turning into the enemy you most fear. All it takes is to lash out violently at someone who has done you some grievous harm, proclaiming tha….

This America has been the country of greed rather than the country of need..

I'm a mongrel in the sense that I'm Spanish, English, Latino, Jewish, north, south - all these things are mixed in me..

I feel as if I can take Indian stories, make them mine and take them to the world..

I'm the most communal person that exists and a very solitary person. So I think writing is a form of getting to the community and being alone, and it….

Responsibility without power, the fate of the secretary through the ages..

Life may unfold chronologically for the body and for bureaucracies that keep track of such things as births, marriages, deaths, visas, tax returns, e….

Most writers who leave their country physically have already left it mentally and emotionally..