Mario Benedetti

“The real influence on my work was reality, that of my country and Latin America in general.”

“My first two books did nada. I ended up paying the publishers.”

“When I have worries, fears or a love affair, I have the luck of being able to transform it into a poem.”

“Cada vez que te enamores no expliques a nadie nada, deja que el amor te invada sin entrar en pormenores”

“Hay menos tiempo que lugar, no obstante, hay lugares que duran un minuto y para cierto tiempo no ha lugar.”

“Five minutes are enough to dream a whole life, that is how relative time is.”

“I do not write for the reader to come, but for him who is here, short of reading the text on my shoulder.”

“After all Death is a Symbol that there was Life.”

“In life you have to avoid three geometric figures - vicious circles, love triangles and square minds”

“I think the only positive thing that came from Uruguay's dictatorship was the spread of Montevideo natives around the world, and I continued writing about them from my various places of exile.”

“La verdad, es que en el fondo soy un fatalista. Si a uno le llega la hora, da lo mismo un Boeing que la puntual maceta que se derrumba sobre uno desde un séptimo piso”

“De pronto tuve conciencia de que ese momento, de que esa rebanada de cotidianidad, era el grado máximo de bienestar, era la Dicha. Nunca había sido tan plenamente feliz como en ese momento, pero tenía la hiriente sensación de que nunca más volvería a serlo, por lo menos en ese grado, con esa intensidad”

“An intellectual's weapon is writing, but sometimes people react as if it were a firearm. A writer can do a lot to change the situation, but as far as I know, no dictatorship has fallen because of a sonnet.”

“I believe life is a parenthesis between two nothings. I'm an atheist. I believe in a personal God, which is conscience, and that's what we must be accountable to every day.”