“I have been so busy asking for faith that I forgot to ask for patience. (p330) - Marjorie Agosín

Almost half of the world believes in wars. Why not change that and make people believe in poetry? Believe in kindness? Believe in encounters? I think it’s our responsibility to invite others and make them feel like they can transform the world.

I grew up in a secular Jewish home. What was so important for us was the ethical values of Judaism and the central principle of our lives, Tikkun Olam (a Hebrew phrase that means “healing the world”). My father did not believe in organized religion, so we did not belong to a synagogue, but we led a Jewish life filled with traditions and meaning in a more unconventional way. Almost my entire family on my mother’s side came from central Europe, especially Vienna. All of them perished in the Holocaust, with the exception of my great-grandmother and her son. Also my grandfather, because he had arrived to Chile much earlier. For me as a writer, the stories of the Shoah are very important. They are central to my writing, which you can see in Dear Anne Frank and also I Lived on Butterfly Hill, in which one of the principal characters, the grandmother, is a survivor of the Holocaust. I also try to invoke in the readers the universal importance of social justice and tolerance. I believe these are not only Jewish teachings but fundamental human ideals. Yet I feel I was and continue to be shaped by growing up in a Jewish home that emphasized these values.

"Yes, I am a refugee. And it is a beautiful word, a beautiful thing. I am an exile. That means I am a traveler of the world and I belong to nothing but the things I love." (p454)