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Gabriel García Márquez
28 quotes
“...a lie is more comfortable than doubt, more useful than love, more lasting than truth ...”
Gabriel García Márquez (1927–2014) first seen 1975 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: translated from El Ontoño del Patriarica (1975) by Gregory Rabassa
“Santiago Nasar had often told me that the smell of closed-in flowers had an immediate relation to death for him.”
Gabriel García Márquez (1927–2014) first seen 1981 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Chronicle of a Death Foretold (1981), trans. Gregory Rabassa [Ballantine, 1984, ], p. 47
“Since the appearance of visible life on Earth, 380 million years had to elapse in order for a butterfly to learn how to fly; 180 million years to create a rose with no other commitment than to be beautiful; and four geological eras in order for us human beings to be able to sing better than birds, and to be able to die from love. It is not honorable for the human talent, in the golden age of science, to have conceived the way for such an ancient and colossal process to return to the nothingness from which it came through the simple act of pushing a button.”
Gabriel García Márquez (1927–2014) first seen 1986 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speaking of nuclear weapons in “The Cataclysm of Damocles” on the anniversary of the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima, on August 6, 1986 (in Spanish)
“It always amuses me that the biggest praise for my work comes for the imagination, while the truth is that there's not a single line in all my work that does not have a basis in reality. The problem is that Caribbean reality resembles the wildest imagination.”
Gabriel García Márquez (1927–2014) said by 2014 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In the end all books are written for your friends. The problem after writing One Hundred Years of Solitude was that now I no longer know whom of the millions of readers I am writing for; this upsets and inhibits me. It's like a million eyes are looking at you and you don't really know what they think.”
Gabriel García Márquez (1927–2014) said by 2014 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Interviewer: You describe seemingly fantastic events in such minute detail that it gives them their own reality. Is this something you have picked up from journalism? García Márquez: That's a journalistic trick which you can also apply to literature. If you say that there are elephants flying in the sky, people are not going to believe you. But if you say that there are four hundred and twenty-five elephants in the sky, people will probably believe you.”
Gabriel García Márquez (1927–2014) said by 2014 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Ultimately, literature is nothing but carpentry.”
Gabriel García Márquez (1927–2014) said by 2014 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I would like for my books to have been recognized posthumously, at least in capitalist countries, where they turn you into a kind of merchandise.”
Gabriel García Márquez (1927–2014) said by 2014 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I can't think of any one film that improved on a good novel, but I can think of many good films that came from very bad novels.”
Gabriel García Márquez (1927–2014) said by 2014 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I was asked the other day if I would be interested in the Nobel Prize, but I think that for me it would be an absolute catastrophe. I would certainly be interested in deserving it, but to receive it would be terrible. It would just complicate even more the problems of fame. The only thing I really regret in life is not having a daughter.”
Gabriel García Márquez (1927–2014) said by 2014 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Life is not what one lived, but what one remembers and how one remembers it in order to recount it.”
Gabriel García Márquez (1927–2014) said by 2014 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Before adolescence, memory is more interested in the future than the past...”
Gabriel García Márquez (1927–2014) said by 2014 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Nostalgia, as always, had wiped away bad memories and magnified the good ones.”
Gabriel García Márquez (1927–2014) said by 2014 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Now you don't have to say yes because your heart is saying it for you.”
Gabriel García Márquez (1927–2014) said by 2014 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Children's lies are signs of great talent.”
Gabriel García Márquez (1927–2014) said by 2014 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“But I believe without any doubt at all that our greatest good fortune was that even in the most extreme difficulties we might lose our patience but never our sense of humor.”
Gabriel García Márquez (1927–2014) said by 2014 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It was impossible to conceive of two creatures so different who got along so well and loved each other so much.”
Gabriel García Márquez (1927–2014) said by 2014 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“From the time they turned one they were tossed from the balconies of the kitchens, first with life preserves so they would lose their fear of the water, and then without life preservers so they would lose their respect for death.”
Gabriel García Márquez (1927–2014) said by 2014 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There are no two men in this world more similar than you and him," she told me. "And that's the worst thing for having a conversation.”
Gabriel García Márquez (1927–2014) said by 2014 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“… no sooner had you done something than someone else appeared who threatened to do it better.”
Gabriel García Márquez (1927–2014) said by 2014 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“… nothing was easy, least of all surviving Sunday afternoons without love.”
Gabriel García Márquez (1927–2014) said by 2014 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“… my unhealthy timidity might be a great obstacle to me in my life.”
Gabriel García Márquez (1927–2014) said by 2014 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Because for you, quitting smoking would be like killing someone you love.”
Gabriel García Márquez (1927–2014) said by 2014 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Until I discovered the miracle that all things that sound are music, including dishes and silverware in the dishwasher, as long as they fulfill the illusion of showing us where life is heading.”
Gabriel García Márquez (1927–2014) said by 2014 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I couldn't tell you because even I don't know who I am yet.”
Gabriel García Márquez (1927–2014) said by 2014 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“… for an instant I thought about stopping the cab to say goodbye, but I preferred not to defy again a destiny as uncertain and persistent as mine.”
Gabriel García Márquez (1927–2014) said by 2014 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The most prosperous countries have succeeded in accumulating powers of destruction such as to annihilate, a hundred times over, not only all the human beings that have existed to this day, but also the totality of all living beings that have ever drawn breath on this planet of misfortune. On a day like today, my master William Faulkner said, "I decline to accept the end of man." I would fall unworthy of standing in this place that was his, if I were not fully aware that the colossal tragedy he refused to recognize thirty-two years ago is now, for the first time since the beginning of humanity, nothing more than a simple scientific possiblity. Faced with this awesome reality that must have seemed a mere utopia through all of human time, we, the inventors of tales, who will believe anything, feel entitled to believe that it is not yet too late to engage in the creation of the opposite utopia. A new and sweeping utopia of life, where no one will be able to decide for others how they die, where love will prove true and happiness be possible, and where the races condemned to one hundred years of solitude will have, at last and forever, a second opportunity on earth.”
Gabriel García Márquez (1927–2014) first seen 1982 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Nobel lecture (8 December 1982, archived)
“A famous writer who wants to continue writing has to be constantly defending himself against fame. I don't really like to say this because it never sounds sincere, but I would really have liked for my books to have been published after my death, so I wouldn't have to go through all this business of fame and being a great writer. In my case, the only advantage to fame is that I have been able to give it a political use. Otherwise, it is quite uncomfortable. The problem is that you're famous for twenty-four hours a day, and you can't say, "Okay, I won't be famous until tomorrow," or press a button and say, "I won't be famous here or now.”
Gabriel García Márquez (1927–2014) said by 2014 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source