Angélica Gorodischer Quotes

As Borges said, one must write in a state of innocence. My writing has changed—change is an integral part of writing—and that to me is good. I’d go so far as to say that all of our writing has changed. We all live with the knowledge that during the Dirty War, some left, some stayed, some collaborated, some were tortured. I suppose to some extent we all encode that knowledge so we can go on living and writing with it, so it doesn’t destroy us.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.