Quote by Victoria Ocampo: “I write because I cannot live without writing.”

Some people do not choose to write the way they might choose a hobby — for them writing is as necessary as breathing. This is about a compulsion so deep it is indistinguishable from survival itself, a need to make sense of the world through language.

Ocampo founded and was running her influential literary journal Sur in the 1930s, during a period when Argentine society was deeply divided between liberal internationalism and rising nationalist, authoritarian movements. She used Sur as a platform to bring global modernist literature to Argentine readers.

Argentine writer, publisher, and intellectual, founder of the influential literary journal Sur, which introduced Latin American readers to European modernism and provided a platform for major writers across the hemisphere. She was a passionate defender of women's rights and intellectual freedom throughout her life.