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 can make a story good is the truth.
The greatest challenge for a writer is to make the reader believe in the impossible.
The only thing that can save us from oblivion is memory.
I believe that the novel is the most complete form of human expression.
The only thing that can make a story immortal is its universality.
I have always tried to write the book that I would like to read.
The greatest victory of a writer is to be understood by his readers.
The only thing that can save us from loneliness is love.
I don't believe in inspiration, I believe in hard work.
The most important thing in life is to be happy.
The only thing that can make a story unforgettable is its magic.
I have always believed that literature is a form of resistance.
The greatest gift a writer can give to his readers is a good story.
The only thing that can save us from despair is hope.
I don't write to change the world, I write to understand it.
The most important thing in a story is its emotional impact.
The only thing that can make a story timeless is its humanity.
I have always tried to write with the heart, not with the head.
The greatest challenge for a writer is to be honest with himself.
The only thing that can save us from ignorance is knowledge.
Contemporaries of Gabriel García Márquez
Other Literatures born within 50 years of Gabriel García Márquez (1927–2014).