From a very young age, he showed great interest in a variety of subjects and activities including literature, chemistry, photography, mechanics, cycling and country life.

Around this time he founded the Salto Cycling Club and achieved the remarkable feat of cycling from his home town to Paysandú, a distance of 120 kilometres (74½ miles) It was also around this time that he worked in a machinery repair shop; under the influence of the owner's son he became interested in philosophy, describing himself as a "forthright and passionate foot soldier of materialism."

At the age of 22, Quiroga became interested in poetry, discovering the work of Leopoldo Lugones, with whom he would later become great friends, and of Edgar Allan Poe.

With the money he received as inheritance he embarked on a four-month trip to Paris, which turned out to be a failure: he returned to Uruguay hungry and disheartened.

On his return Quiroga gathered together his friends Federico Ferrando, Alberto Brignole, Julio Jaureche, Fernández Saldaña, José Hasda and Asdrúbal Delgado, and with them founded the Consistorio del Gay Saber (The Consistory of The Gay Science), a literary laboratory for their experimental writing, in which they found new ways to express themselves and their modernist goals.

His friend Federico Ferrando had received bad reviews from Germán Papini, a Montevideo journalist, and challenged him to a duel.

The police investigated the circumstances of the homicide and deemed Ferrando's death an accident; Quiroga was released after four days' detention.

Racked with grief and guilt over the death of his beloved friend, Quiroga dissolved The Consistory and moved from Uruguay to Argentina.

His sister's husband also introduced him to pedagogy and found him work as a teacher under contract to the board of examination for the Colegio Nacional de Buenos Aires.

The jungle of Misiones left a profound impression on Quiroga that marked his life forever: he spent six months and the last of his inheritance (seven thousand pesos) on some land for cotton in Chaco Province, located seven kilometers from Resistencia, next to the Saladito River.

Upon returning to Buenos Aires after his failed experience in the Chaco, Quiroga embraced the short story with passion and energy.

Taking advantage of the fact that the government wanted the land to be used, Quiroga bought a farm (with Vincent Gozalbo) of 185 hectares (460 acres) in the province of Misiones, on the banks of the Upper Parana, and began making preparations, while teaching Castilian and Literature nearby.

Quiroga insisted on the relationship despite the opposition of her parents, eventually garnering their permission to marry her and take her to live in the jungle with him.

During the same year, the writer began farming in partnership with his friend, fellow Uruguayan Vicente Gozalbo, and he was also appointed justice of the peace in the civil registry of San Ignacio.

This job was not the best fit for Quiroga who, forgetful, disorganized and careless, took to the habit of jotting down deaths, marriages and births on small pieces of paper and "archiving" them in a cookie tin.

Between 1912 and 1915 the writer, who already had experience as a cotton farmer and herbalist, undertook a bold pursuit to increase the farming and maximize the natural resources of their lands.

Literature continued to be the peak of his life: in the journal Fray Mocho de Buenos Aires Quiroga published numerous stories, many set in the jungle and populated by characters so naturalistic that they seemed real.

[5] After Ana María's death, Quiroga left for Buenos Aires with his children where he became an under-secretary general accountant at the Uruguayan Consulate, thanks to the efforts of some of his friends who wanted to help.

Manuel Galvez, owner of a publishing firm, had suggested that he write it and the volume immediately became a huge success with audiences and critics, consolidating Quiroga as the true master of the Latin American short story.

The following year he settled in a small apartment on Calle Agüero, while he published Jungle Tales (1918, a collection of children's stories featuring animals and set in the Misiones rainforest).

The next year, following the idea of "The Consistory", Quiroga founded the Anaconda Association, a group of intellectuals involved in cultural activities in Argentina and Uruguay.

Palacio's parents' unrelenting rejection of this idea and the consequent failure of the relationship inspired the theme of his second novel, Past love (published later, in 1929).

The novel contains autobiographical elements of the strategies he used himself to pursue Palacio, such as leaving messages in a hollowed branch, sending letters written in code and trying to dig a long tunnel to her room with thoughts of kidnapping her.

At the height of his popularity, a major publisher honored him, along with other literary figures of the time such as Arturo Capdevila, Baldomero Fernandez Moreno, Benito Lynch, Juana de Ibarbourou, Armando Donoso and Luis Franco.

As a follower of the modernista school founded by Rubén Darío, as well as admirer of Edgar Allan Poe and Guy de Maupassant, Quiroga was attracted to topics covering the most intriguing aspects of nature, often tinged with horror, disease, insanity and human suffering.

[7] His Décalogo del Perfecto Cuentista (Ten Commandments for the Perfect Storyteller), dedicated to young writers, provides certain contradictions with his own work.