If there is a machine that talks and apparently thinks, then it is not language that makes us unique. What makes us unique? The more pressing philosophical question is what makes us human?

Since I was a child I have been fascinated by bestiaries, especially medieval ones. The hybrid animals that all cultures have generated are symbols of our shadows, representations of the monster that the whole of humanity breeds in its entrails.

Sometimes art is so powerful that it blends with life. After 100 minutes of contemplation, of poetic brushstrokes, I have been left with the certainty that to overcome meaninglessness, abandonment, we only have skin and poetry.

My friend Jean Francois Zurawik was the man who made people happy. It was his obsession, his reason for living. He was the visionary who made the Fete des Lumieres in Lyon the most visited mass event in Europe.

A few hours ago, my much-admired friend Margaret Sayers-Peden, or Petch, one of the great Spanish to English translators, died. She never got to read this letter.

When I can return to the sea, to my mountains, to my cloud forests, I hope I will be able to feel that same amazement.

My utopia has become simpler… I now have nostalgia of the loves that will come, of the trips I have not yet taken, of health as power and capacity. Saudade of the future skin, of the perfect utopia of dialogue and learning, of the music that saves and lifts us up, of being free from fear.

Speech by Pablo Corral Vega, Secretary of Culture, on the Day of Interculturality. I maintain that identity is built around three great forces: memory, intimacy and the encounter with others.

Speech at the 2018 Quito Book Fair and portraits of Haruki Murakami during the event. We speak to connect with one another, language is the mirror in which we discover ourselves.

Speech during the election of the queen of rurality in Calacalí. It was especially difficult to write this text because I am opposed to beauty pageants but I consider it important to respect the traditions of rurality.

Speech at the opening of the exhibition of the same name. When we allow ourselves to observe the political dimension of intimacy we are forced to be defenders at all costs of tenderness, of consent.

Speech for the day of multiculturalism. Indians do not dialogue with mestizos, nor do blacks dialogue with whites. It is human beings who dialogue

Professional photographers have lost the exclusivity of photographic language. Billions of people can now take high quality photos and also share them, that is, use them beyond the private sphere.

In the summer, one sheds all extra clothing, casting off one’s belongings to the point of near-nakedness. Without memory. Without dreams. Without knowledge.

I’ve heard a terrible rumor. They’re saying that Gabriel Garcia Marquez is dead. Who could think up such a hoax? To say that Gabo is dead is the same as saying that Aureliano Buendía never existed.

Happiness is a glass of fresh water on a hot day, the breeze on your skin, the evening light that kisses everything with its honey.

The great master Luigi Stornaiolo, one of the most important plastic artists of Ecuador, has fun while painting a picture in the Seseribó Salsoteca in Quito.

This is the text I wrote in October 2012 as an introduction to the book Tango, published by Dinediciones. It is a postcard taken halfway through, from a project that has taken me decades.

Nothing as important as love. Nothing that touches us so intimately. Nothing that expresses more fully the desolation of solitude, the abyss, doubt.

When you climb up to those peaks, far off in the distance you see mountains that are even higher yet — mountains surrounded by dark forests, terrible and mysterious mountains impossible to climb.

When we press the shutter, we are saying Here I am; This moment matters, I matter; These are the people I love; I wish this moment would last.

Sometimes when I need to go back to the house of my beginnings, the house that is center and point of reference, the place where identity is formed, I travel to a place in the mountains that is far above the clouds.  There I forget for a moment the daily struggle, the fear of death…

¿You ask me what the Andes are? Let me tell you. In Quechua, the eastern Cordillera is called Antis or Antisuyo. When you climb these peaks you see in the distance much higher mountains, mountains surrounded by jungle, impossible to climb, terrible and mysterious.

How does the last orange taste? What becomes of an island that knows no poetry? How much is a tear worth in the desert?

South America is a continent of geographic extremes. There we find the largest tropical rain forest on the planet and the driest desert, and on its west an entire coastline, from Patagonia to the shores of the Caribbean, is dominated by the Andes.