MGP: When you think back to your childhood, what’s the first thing you remember?
SM: Being afraid. That’s what I was when I was a child–afraid. And I have a feeling that I felt very lonely before my sister was born. I don’t really have any memories from that time. I have an image of myself walking alone in an enormous garden and picking up scarab beetles–the ones we call vigilantes in Argentina–which I found fascinating. That image of great solitude and fear is carved into my memory.
Sylvia Molloy. Interviewed by Magdalena García Pinto.