Why I write.

• Author: Galeano, Eduardo
• Position: The Upside-Down World

A confession, to begin. Ever since I was a baby, I tried to be a soccer player. I still am the best of the best, number one, but only during dreamtime when I'm asleep. As soon as I wake up I discover that my legs are made of wood, and I am left with no choice but to try to be a writer.

I tried, and I go on trying, to say more with less, to find words that are better than the wisest silence, naked words free of rhetorical clothing. Writing has been, and still is, quite difficult, but frequently it brings me deep feelings and great pleasure, and it carries me far from solitude and oblivion.

I tried, I try, to learn to fly in the dark, like a bat. I tried, I try, to vomit the lies we are obliged to swallow each day. And I tried, I try, to be disobedient when the masters of the world give orders against my conscience and against common sense.

I tried, I try, to accept that I cannot be neutral and cannot be objective, because I do not want to become an object, indifferent to human passion.

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I tried, I try, to denounce that old proverb which says that man is the wolf of his fellow man. It is a lie. Wolves never kill wolves. We are the only animals that specialize in mutual extermination.

I tried, I try, to write about women and men who have a will for justice and an urge for beauty, unbound by the borders of maps and time, for they are my compatriots and my contemporaries, no matter where they were born or when they lived.

I tried, I try, to be stubborn enough to continue believing, in spite...