Gabriel García Márquez

"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: Thats 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."

"… nothing was easy, least of all surviving Sunday afternoons without love."

"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."

"A famous writer who wants to continue writing has to be constantly defending himself against fame. I dont 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 wouldnt 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 youre famous for twenty-four hours a day, and you cant say, "Okay, I wont be famous until tomorrow," or press a button and say, "I wont be famous here or now."

"...a lie is more comfortable than doubt, more useful than love, more lasting than truth ..."

"Santiago Nasar had often told me that the smell of closed-in flowers had an immediate relation to death for him."

"It always amuses me that the biggest praise for my work comes for the imagination, while the truth is that theres 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."

"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. Its like a million eyes are looking at you and you dont really know what they think."

"Ultimately, literature is nothing but carpentry."

"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."

"I cant 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."

"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."