On this episode two world-renowned writers tell us why they write and how they write.

When a writer shuts himself up in a room for years on end to hone his craft, to create a world,

if he uses his secret wounds as his starting point he is whether he knows it or not putting a great fate in humanity.

Literature requires a fate in humanity. My confidence comes from the belief that all

human beings resemble one another, that others carry wounds like mine, that they will therefore

understand.

All true literature rises from this childish, hopeful certainty that all people resemble

one another.

That is Orhan Pamak, Turkey's most celebrated novelist and winner of the 2006 Nobel Prize in literature.

And this is Carlos Fuentes, a giant of Mexican letters and one of the people who launched the boom in Latin American fiction.

Literature creates another reality.

It gives us a deeper image of ourselves. How many times reading a book, don't we feel

that we are looking at a mirror, that we are reflected in that mirror of the books, and

that we are starting to understand ourselves much better than we ever did before.

That we're discovering facets of ourselves that we never before imagined were there.

That we are seen through a book our own unrealized possibilities.

What we can do as individuals in society, with ourselves in relation with our fellow men and women.

That literature is giving us a broader space for our, and setting out the possibility of new claims,

both personal and social, our new desires.

These two writers grew up on different continents in entirely distinct cultures, but each became an inventive celebrated literary lion whose words transcend national borders and each became a voice of conscience to

his compatriots. They did not know each other well, hardly at all, but at one moment their lives intersected in a profound way.

Carlos Fuentes and Orhan Pamuk are the subject of today's episode of What It Takes,

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