“Believe in the power of your voice! Be yourself. Everyone is unique.”

When they tried me out as a host on TV, I found that I just couldn’t be that gregarious person. I was stranger than that.

I have one son. Of everything I’ve done in my life, nothing matches the feeling of having life growing inside you.

I’ve always liked working really hard and then doing nothing in particular. So, consequently, I didn’t overexpose myself; I guess I maintained a kind of mystery. I wasn’t ambitious.

I still like my antique clothes.

I love things that are indescribable, like the taste of an avocado or the smell of a gardenia.

If I hear a record once, I usually never listen to it again. I rarely listen to music – unless it’s Billie Holiday.

Oh God, don’t envy me, I have my own pains.

Being a celebrity is a no-win situation. If you get along with your co-star you’re having an affair, if you don’t you’re having a feud.

I just don’t like the idea of her singing my songs. Who the hell does she thinks she is? The world doesn’t need another Streisand! (on Diana Ross)

I can take any truth; just don’t lie to me.

Men are allowed to have passion and commitment for their work… a woman is allowed that feeling for a man, but not her work.

Why is it men are permitted to be obsessed about their work, but women are only permitted to be obsessed about men?

Art does not exist only to entertain, but also to challenge one to think, to provoke, even to disturb, in a constant search for truth.

I wish I could be like Shaw who once read a bad review of one of his plays, called the critic and said: ‘I have your review in front of me and soon it will be behind me.’

Life’s too short. Start with Dessert!

I don’t like the word ‘superstar’. It has ridiculous implications. These words – star, stupor, superstar, stupid star – they’re misleading. It’s a myth.

Being honest doesn’t mean you say whatever you want, wherever you want. It means that what you choose to say is true.

I don’t have any special passion for politics, it being a never-ending merry-go-round of bosses big and small, all generally mediocre. I actually find it boring.

My work stops at publication. If the books don’t contain in themselves their reasons for being – questions and answers – it means I was wrong to have them published.

Being raised in a developing country opened my eyes to so much I cannot tolerate. In Colombia, education is sometimes considered a luxury, not a human right. And it’s not a priority in the agendas of many leaders.

Quarrel? Nonsense; we have not quarreled. If one is not to get into a rage sometimes, what is the good of being friends?

when it comes to their essential faculty as writers, all writers are androgynous beings.

I was never a worker. And that’s not even being arrogant. I was just never a worker.

The curt truth is that, in a deep secret way, the state of being beloved is intolerable to many.