Influences are very subtle currents. One doesn’t learn anything directly, one absorbs (at least in my case that’s how it is) and swallows and assimil… - Angélica Gorodischer

(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.

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.