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)
I have always believed that the best way to write is to tell a story as if you were telling it to a child.
The writer's task is to make people believe in the incredible.
I don't write to be famous, I write to be read.
The most important thing in life is to learn how to love.
Solitude is the price of greatness.
I believe that the world is going to be saved by love, and that literature is a way of expressing that love.
The only way to overcome fear is to confront it.
I have always been a storyteller, even before I knew how to write.
The greatest invention of the human mind is the story.
I write because I have to, because I can't imagine living without writing.
The world is full of magic, and the writer's job is to reveal it.
I am a journalist by trade, and a writer by passion.
The most difficult thing is to start, the rest is just perseverance.
I have always been fascinated by the power of words.
The purpose of art is to disturb the comfortable and comfort the disturbed.
I write to understand the world, and to make others understand it.
The best stories are those that are true, even if they never happened.
I believe in the power of imagination to transform reality.
Writing is a solitary act, but it is also a way of connecting with others.
The most important thing is to have something to say, and then to say it well.
Contemporaries of Gabriel García Márquez
Other Literatures born within 50 years of Gabriel García Márquez (1927–2014).