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.

Certainly, my advice is that communicating, lobbying, fundraising and engaging the public in policy and politics is far more exciting and inexpensive via the Internet. Old guard organizations like Common Cause had to evolve to embrace this new environment.

I used to love politics. I can't say I do any more. All the fun has gone out of it. Each side is engaged in this trench warfare of managerialism. They're all too scared to say anything that might make them appear something other than completely bland.

If I have learned nothing else in all my years here, my biggest lesson is you have to constantly reinvent this company. That's how you get to be 103 years old.

For my part, I make this pledge to all of you: The politics of division, of pitting east against west, urban versus rural, region against region, and people against people will have no place in my Administration.