If justice takes place, there may be hope, even in the face of a seemingly capricious divinity.

At night, here in the library, the ghosts have voices.

From fire, water, the passage of time, neglectful readers, and the hand of the censor, each of my books has escaped to tell me its story.

Readers, censors know, are defined by the books they read.

I had a library of maybe 1,000 books in my room in Buenos Aires. I did have the sense that everything there was organised in the right way. You'll probably think I needed serious psychiatric treatment, but there were times when I would not buy a book because I knew it wouldn't fit one of the categories into which I had divided the library.

All these are readers, and their gestures, their craft, the pleasure, the responsibility and the power they derive from reading, are common with mine. I am not alone.

Without Leskov there would be no Bulgakov, no Chekhov, but also no Garca Mrquez and Julio Cortzar. . . . Leskov is the essential storyteller: he does not portray life, he creates it in all its wonder and terror and magic.