"To begin with, a writer plays with words, but plays seriously ... when I was a child and was interrupted for any reason from a game I was playing alone or with my friends, I felt offended and humiliated, because I had the impression that they didn't realize to what extent that game I was playing with my friends was enormously important to all of us. We had an entire code, an entire system, an entire small world ... From the most complex games to the simplest ones, we had entered, while we were playing, into a territory that was totally ours and extremely important for as long as the game lasted. When a person gets interested in literature, this can persist; in my case, it persisted. I've always felt that there is a very important ludic element in literature..."
-- Julio Cortazar, from "The Ludic in Literature" in Literature Class: Berkeley 1980
