Skill alone cannot teach or produce a great short story, which condenses the obsession of the creature; it is a hallucinatory presence manifest from …

- Julio Cortazar

All profound distraction opens certain doors. You have to allow yourself to be distracted when you are unable to concentrate.

- Julio Cortazar

In quoting others, we cite ourselves.

- Julio Cortazar

Only in dreams, in poetry, in play do we sometimes arrive at what we were before we were this thing that, who knows, we are.

- Julio Cortazar

Of all our feelings the only one which really doesn't belong to us is hope. Hope belongs to life, it's life itself defending itself. Etcetera.

- Julio Cortazar

Only by living absurdly is it possible to break out of this infinite absurdity.

- Julio Cortazar

Memory is a mirror that scandalously lies.

- Julio Cortazar

But what is memory if not the language of feeling, a dictionary of faces and days and smells which repeat themselves like the verbs and adjectives in…

- Julio Cortazar

Come sleep with me: We won't make Love,Love will make us.

- Julio Cortazar