When I was growing up, the Spanish-speaking world was Balkanized. We were isolated. We didn't know what was happening in cultural terms in Ecuador, Colombia and Chile. Nowadays, this has changed a lot - fortunately for writers and readers. There is much more integration.

I am not going to participate in professional politics again.

I think that literature has the important effect of creating free, independent, critical citizens who cannot be manipulated.

Today, everybody is more or less conscious of the total failure of the Cuban revolution to produce wealth, to produce a better standard of living for the Cubans. With the exception of small radical parties, Latin Americans know that it's a brutal dictatorship and the longest in Latin American history.

It's never a good thing to see a government agency talk in secret about the need to 'control protestors' - especially when that agency is charged with protecting the homeland against terrorists, not nonviolent demonstrators exercising their First Amendment rights to peaceable dissent.

The maxim, that governments ought to train the people in the way in which they should go, sounds well. But is there any reason for believing that a government is more likely to lead the people in the right way than the people to fall into the right way of themselves?

I might be popular, but that is not sufficient in a parliamentary democracy set-up. One has to assess every chief minister, his success and rating in terms of how far he has succeeded in developing his colleagues.

My position on democracy is really clear. Any attempt to overthrow the country is a betrayal to our unity and is treason.