Gabriel García Márquez
Master of magical realism, One Hundred Years of Solitude
Most quoted
"I discovered that my obsession for having each thing in the right place, each subject at the right time, each word in the right style, was not the well-deserved reward of an ordered mind, but just the opposite: a complete system of pretense invented by me to hide the disorder of my nature."
— from Living to Tell the Tale, 2002
"The only thing that came to her in that moment was the memory of the afternoon when her father had read the piece about the siege to her, and she was shocked that she could remember it with so many details when she could not remember what she had done the previous week."
— from Love in the Time of Cholera, 1985
"Human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them, but ... life obliges them over and over again to relinquish themselves to an exit as painful and dramatic as the one that obliged them to emerge for the first time."
— from Love in the Time of Cholera, 1986
All quotes by Gabriel García Márquez (267)
The only thing that matters is love, and love is a mystery.
The writer's duty is to make the reader believe in the unbelievable.
The first condition of a good journalist is to be a good person.
The problem of Latin America is not that it has too many dictators, but that it has too many people who want to be dictators.
The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist.
There is no greater glory than to die for one's country, but there is no greater tragedy either.
The only thing that can make a dream impossible is the fear of failure.
The truth is that I am not a writer. I am a journalist.
The only way to escape the abyss is to look at it, measure it, plumb it and descend into it.
The greatest victory is to live in peace.
The world is not a place where you can be happy all the time.
He allowed himself to be swayed by his conviction that human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them, but that life obliges them over and over again to give birth to themselves.
The only thing that comes for sure is death, colonel.
Crazy people are not crazy if one accepts their reasoning.
Human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them, but ... life obliges them over and over again to give birth to themselves.
A man knows when he is growing old because he begins to look like his father.
She discovered with great delight that one does not love one's children just because they are one's children but because of the friendship formed while raising them.
Nothing in this world was more difficult than love.
Nobody deserves your tears, but whoever deserves them will not make you cry.
A true friend is the one who holds your hand and touches your heart.
Contemporaries of Gabriel García Márquez
Other Literatures born within 50 years of Gabriel García Márquez (1927–2014).