So many stories, and to choose which ones to tell and how to tell them. The words, they will tap me on the shoulder and they will speak to me: Tell me! Tell me! The stories choose me.
Writing is a marvelous adventure and very labor-intensive: those words run away and try to escape. They are very difficult to capture.
Almost all wars, perhaps all, are trade wars connected with some material interest. They are always disguised as sacred wars, made in the name of God, or civilization or progress. But all of them, or almost all of the wars, have been trade wars.
In the struggle of good against evil, it’s always the people who get killed.
Each time a new war is disclosed in the name of the fight of the good against evil, those who are killed are all poor. It’s always the same story repeating once and again and again.
I would recognise myself in each of his translations and he would feel betrayed and annoyed whenever I didn’t write something the way he would have. A part of me died with him, a part of him lives with me.
The world is a heap of people, a sea of tiny flames.
Indignation must always be the answer to indignity. Reality is not destiny.
Unlike solidarity, which is horizontal and takes place between equals, charity is top-down, humiliating those who receive it and never challenging the implicit power relations.
I remember that – you know, I didnt receive a formal education. I was educated in the Montevideo cafe, in the cafes of Montevideo. There, I received my first lessons in the art of telling stories, storytelling.
When a book is alive, really alive, you feel it. You put it to your ear here, and you feel it breathe, sometimes laugh, sometimes cry, just like a person, a little person.
There are some writers who feel they are elected by God. I am not. I am elected by the devil – this is clear.
In his life, a man can change wives, political parties or religions but he cannot change his favourite soccer team.
Because every single one of us has something to say to the others, something that deserves to be celebrated or forgiven by others.
Latin America is part of the world which was for many years condemned to the system of power where intimidation had more strength than the vote.
Our defeat was always implicit in the victory of others; our wealth has always generated our poverty by nourishing the prosperity of others – the empires and their native overseers. In the colonial and neocolonial alchemy, gold changes into scrap metal and food into poison.
Schools teach ignorance.
Where do people earn the Per Capita Income? More than one poor starving soul would like to know. In our countries, numbers live better than people. How many people prosper in times of prosperity? How many people find their lives developed by development?
The tree of life knows that, whatever happens, the warm music spinning around it will never stop. However much death may come, however much blood may flow, the music will dance men and women as long as the air breaths them and the land plows and loves them.
It is highly improbable that the bureaucrat will put his life on the line. It is absolutely impossible that he’ll put his job on the line.