I think food is the closest thing we have to memory—to the memory of family gatherings, the memory of your grandmother the cook, or maybe the desire … - Marjorie Agosín

when 9/11 was taking place in the U.S., few journalists, except people like Ariel Dorfman, few of them mentioned that there was another 9/11 that took place in Chile created by the terrorism that the United States government, in a way, was supporting through the CIA...this country is having very similar patterns of dictatorial regimes, and I feel somehow I am like in a little dictatorship here under disguise of this democracy. And George Bush is creating, has created, the ideology of fear, and saying, "If you do not vote for me, you will not be protected." And I think there is paranoia, the levels of alert, and that's exactly what General Pinochet did...The Patriot Act is just a disgrace to American faith in the world, and I am very frightened for this country. I have been through a dictatorship, and I think we've all complied to so many things, and what is really scaring me is this whole defeatist attitude that there's nothing that can be done, and I think that's wrong. There's much that can be done.

I think that too many people are thrown into history, but remain accomplices, which means [they] are silent. I think what I like to say, and this is something I am the most proud of, that I made the choice to become a witness of those times. I made an absolutely conscious choice that I was going to be that, and I continue to look at the world with the same passion and commitment for social justice as when I was 17 years old, and sometimes people cannot believe it. They think I am this crazy idealist, but I am the same, even more now.

Books unite people and books in translation are the thresholds of other cultures, invitations to travel and to know others.