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 greatest beauty is in the ordinary, in the everyday moments of life.
I write to remember, to keep the memories of my life alive.
The problem with reality is that it is often too complicated for the human mind. The problem with fiction is that it is often too simple.
Ultimately, literature is nothing but carpentry. With both, you are working with reality, a material just as hard as wood.
The first condition of a good writer is to be a good human being.
I have always said that the only thing that really interests me is the process of writing. The rest is just a consequence.
The world would be a better place if everyone read more poetry.
A writer's job is to make people believe in things that don't exist.
One minute of reconciliation is worth more than a whole life of friendship.
The only way to be a good writer is to be a good reader.
The most important thing in a story is to make people believe it.
The greatest danger for a writer is to be admired too much.
I don't believe in God, but I'm afraid of him.
The only thing that can save us from barbarism is culture.
The duty of a writer is to be a witness to his time.
The greatest invention of the twentieth century was the novel.
I am not a politician, I am a writer. And a writer's only weapon is the word.
The only thing that can save Latin America is its imagination.
I have always been a journalist. My books are just long journalistic reports.
The most important thing is to have something to say.
Contemporaries of Gabriel García Márquez
Other Literatures born within 50 years of Gabriel García Márquez (1927–2014).