what we can control is how we respond to what happens to us, what we do with what happens to us. Even if the range of choice is minimal, there is alw… - Rosa Montero

You can’t make a living out of fiction writing. You can’t and you shouldn’t. I always tell everyone that is a huge mistake, because I have seen many writers get lost because of that. Novels should be an area of total freedom. It is already difficult to fight against the market pressure, against the pressure from your friends, your family, your editors, against the pressure of your own ambitions. All of that is already a fight. If you also have to earn money to pay for the mortgage, it’s fatal.

I will say there are two authors I consider my teachers, one on the most realistic side and the other one in the most fantastic side: one of them is American, Ursula K. Le Guin...and the other one is half American, Nabokov, although his Russian ancestry and his Russian works also influence me a lot.

The print journalism I do, reporting, is a literary genre as any other, and it can also be as sublime as any other.