Angélica Gorodischer Quotes

A work is good or bad or mediocre, and that’s all. Neither the theme of the work nor the genre in which it’s written tell you anything. There are a lot of horrible SF stories and novels, those where the little green men with antennas appear and so, which are in fact trash. And then there are marvels like Ursula Le Guin, Philip K. Dick and others.

I’ve written about all kinds of things and every one of my books is very different from the others, which delights me. You can say that I have carved a style out of all my various resources, out of being different in every book.

As Borges, the Master, said: “When I heard Funes speak, then I had the story.” One has to let the character speak.

(about Argentina) Its tendencies are self-destructive. Everything here is concerned with death, not life. Argentina functions opposite to the way it should, that’s why it’s surreal.

People are the same everywhere, in Buenos Aires, in Ulan Bator, in Paris, in Roldán, in Toronto, etc. People always want the same things, to have food, a house, warmth in the winter, cool in the summer, to go to the movies on Saturdays, to go on vacation . . . and to be told stories. To listen to stories is a basic necessity. And everything is a big story: journalism, television, radio, religion, film, everything. We are all readers, active or potential. “Tell me a story,” the reader says. “I am going to tell you a story,” says the author, “but you have to believe me.” “I will believe you,” says the reader. And thus, on the basis of this agreement, those of us who write set ourselves to tell a story. Which can be a novel, or theater, poetry, but that will always be a story. And so we fulfill one of people’s basic needs. As important as food and shelter.

Of course, one never writes alone. One writes in the company of all one has read.

when I abandoned SF, I didn’t abandon Balzac or Borges or Cervantes, but I added the people that interest me: the women, Margaret Atwood, Virginia Woolf, Asa Larsson, Fred Vargas, Clarice Lispector, and so forth, plus feminist theorists. I no longer read SF. I look around to see what’s new and I keep to what interests me: science (astrophysics and paleoanthropology above all), women’s politics.

We must remember who they are and what they did. Because the future grows out of the past, we must stay alert.

Inspiration doesn’t exist; what exists is work. As someone said: “Inspiration arrived . . . and found me working.” There is no other way.

(Who are currently your favorite writers, be they Argentine, Latin American or from elsewhere?) AG: Borges, of course. Borges always. Balzac, also always. Alejo Carpentier, Clarice Lispector, Armonía Somers, Juan Rulfo, Mercé Rodoreda, Grace Paley, Marcel Proust. Oh, so many people, so many!

The crucial task of the writer here is to remember, to try to remember. Not that we should all literally note down facts and events. But memory is inscribed in a literary text in a process I don’t think anyone really understands.

Writing and translating are part of the same miracle that is language—that which made us human.

I think that fantasy is inserted in our cells, in the double helix. Sometimes it works and there appear works of pure, magnificent fantasy. Other times authors try to tame her and don’t let her come out, but she’s always there and she ends up doing what she wants.

As Borges said, everything that was ever said in the world is a great story. History, philosophy, cookbooks, religions, scientific formulas, tango, novels, boleros, popular songs—all are stories about some part of the universe.

Memory here is always the protagonist: We Must Remember. We Must Forget. We Must Pardon So We Can Forget. We Must Forget So We Can Pardon.