In these times there is no bigger liar than hegemonic journalism! So good fiction does a great job of teaching us how to read between the lines and e… - Luisa Valenzuela

(Do you think hard times fuel creativity?) Let me separate this question in two. No, I don’t think that hard times necessarily fuel creativity. Often it silences you. Freud knew that very well. I had this ongoing discussion with Joseph Brodsky at the New York Institute for the Humanities; he used to affirm that censorship is good for literature but bad for the writer. But at home it could be seriously bad not only for the writer (who finally takes responsibility for his or her words) but also for everyone around us, even innocent people who appeared in our phone books. And, on the other hand, I did write a lot during those terrible times. But I was one of the very few, and it all started before the military takeover.

(Having lived for many years outside of Argentina, what is your conception of home?) VALENZUELA: I lived for over three years in France, one in Normandy and then in Paris. Practically a year in Barcelona. And ten glorious years in New York, from where I moved back and forth to Mexico and, at least once a year, with trepidation, home to Buenos Aires. I don't miss anything anymore, neither people nor places. Many writers say that language is their real home. I am all for that notion. During the last military dictatorship it was said that the writers who had left the country would progressively distance themselves from their roots until one day they would no longer be Argentine writers. It was a way of dismissing those voices, the only ones capable of being critical and objective about the regime. I, for one, don't need my roots deep in the ground; I carry them with me-like the aerial roots of our local clavel del aire. Anyhow, you can never really return home. Buenos Aires has changed so much that is no longer my city. It is a good place to clam-in and write, and the mother tongue is crucial. One thing I discovered in coming back is the importance of your own intonations as background noise. I left New York when I started dreaming in English, talking to myself in English, thinking in English. The Argentine language is a home I don't want to lose.

Borges has this wonderful phrase in a short story: "La falta de imaginación los movió a ser crueles" (the lack of imagination moved them to cruelty). Though cruelty with imagination can be the worst of all-just think of certain torturers in our respective countries. As a tool, imagination should only be used by writers, in their writing.