When I was growing up, the Spanish-speaking world was Balkanized. We were isolated. We didn't know what was happening in cultural terms in Ecuador, Colombia and Chile. Nowadays, this has changed a lot - fortunately for writers and readers. There is much more integration.

I am not going to participate in professional politics again.

I think that literature has the important effect of creating free, independent, critical citizens who cannot be manipulated.

Today, everybody is more or less conscious of the total failure of the Cuban revolution to produce wealth, to produce a better standard of living for the Cubans. With the exception of small radical parties, Latin Americans know that it's a brutal dictatorship and the longest in Latin American history.

The tantalizing discomfort of perplexity is what inspires otherwise ordinary men and women to extraordinary feats of ingenuity and creativity; nothing quite focuses the mind like dissonant details awaiting harmonious resolution.

Get into your own creativity. Sketch and paint with different mediums and follow your heart.

I've always been in love with film and music.

It is a sign of my mother's determination, confidence, and creativity that more than 50 years after launching the renowned Ebony Fashion Fair show, her timeless sense of style endures as a guidepost for today's fashion-loving women.