I have always responded to challenges, followed apocalyptical personalities, apostles, Rasputins, Joan of Arcs who hear voices that come from Heaven,… - Elena Poniatowska

Carefully I asked them questions, visited them in their crowded neighborhoods, watched their kites cross the sky in February, treated them like kites, because that's how testimonial literature is. It fills one with anxiety, with insecurity. One handles very fragile material, people's hearts; their names, which are their honor; their work; and their time. And one tries to turn it into memorable material.

We women treasure faces; in fact at any given moment life becomes a single face that we can touch with our lips.

style, as I see it, is not an adornment added to a work. It is more, as Buffon said, that “le style c’est l’homme même”—style is the man himself...That famous line is actually the conclusion of a longer thought—“Writing well consists of thinking, feeling and expressing well, of clarity of mind, soul and taste.” In my own words, I would say that style is a manifestation of the writer’s being, which, of course, changes over time but retains something essential of who he is...One does not develop a style. One develops oneself. Or, perhaps more accurately, one is born with a certain character and life shapes it. And then, if you write or paint or sculpt, you do those things with the person you have ­become. And that is style.