Julio Cortázar

“I belong to the first generation of Latin American writers brought up reading other Latin American writers. Before my time the work of Latin American writers was not well distributed, even on our continent. In Chile it was very hard to read other writers from Latin America. My greatest influences have been all the great writers of the Latin American Boom in literature: García Márquez, Vargas Llosa, Cortázar, Borges, Paz, Rulfo, Amado, etc. Isabel Allende Interview”

“Julio was never a regional writer. You could see he was Argentinian, but he was more like Borges , more universal from the very beginning. He didn’t jump from the regionalism, he wrote universally all the time...It’s not that Julio was not very Argentinian, he was very Argentinian but his works were never as local. Claribel Alegría Interview with Bomb Magazine”

“Reflections on the Fantastic”

“The only true exile is the writer who lives in his own country.”

“The snail lives the way I like to live; he carries his own home with him.”

“Translation: LOVE 77”

“Hair loss and retrieval”

“Nada está perdido si se tiene el valor de proclamar que todo está perdido y hay que empezar de nuevo. Translation: Nothing is lost if one has the courage to proclaim that all is lost and we must begin anew.”

“I touch your mouth, I touch the edge of your mouth with my finger, I am drawing it as if it were something my hand was sketching, as if for the first time your mouth opened a little, and all I have to do is close my eyes to erase it and start all over again, every time I can make the mouth I want appear, the mouth which my hand chooses and sketches on your face, and which by some chance that I do not seek to understand coincides exactly with your mouth which smiles beneath the one my hand is sketching on you.”

“' Andábamos sin buscarnos pero sabiendo que andábamos para encontrarnos.' Translation: We went around without looking for each other, but knowing we went around to find each other.”