Mario Benedetti

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

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

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

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.

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.