Explore Quotes by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

The heart's memory eliminates the bad and magnifies the good.

As a writer I'm merely a journalist who has learned to write better than others.

Nobody is worth crying for, and those that are worth it will not make you cry.

When I sit down to write, which is the essential moment in my life, I am completely alone. Whenever I write a book, I accumulate a lot of documentation. That background material is the most intimate part of my private life. It's a little embarrassing - like being seen in your underwear It's like the way magicians never tell others how they make a dove come out of a hat.

Unfortunately many young writers are more concerned with fame than with their own work... It's much more important to write than to be written about.

Necessity has the face of a dog.

I don't know who said that novelists read the novels of others only to figure out how they are written. I believe it's true. We aren't satisfied with the secrets exposed on the surface of the page: we turn the book around to find the seams.

The interpretation of our reality through patterns not our own, serves only to make us ever more unknown, ever less free, ever more solitary.

I must try and break through the cliches about Latin America. Superpowers and other outsiders have fought over us for centuries in ways that have nothing to do with our problems. In reality we are all alone.

I think that the idea that I'm writing for many more people than I ever imagined has created a certain general responsibility that is literary and political. There's even pride involved, in not wanting to fall short of what I did before.

Faulkner is a writer who has had much to do with my soul, but Hemingway is the one who had the most to do with my craft - not simply for his books, but for his astounding knowledge of the aspect of craftsmanship in the science of writing.

In journalism just one fact that is false prejudices the entire work. In contrast, in fiction one single fact that is true gives legitimacy to the entire work. That's the only difference, and it lies in the commitment of the writer. A novelist can do anything he wants so long as he makes people believe in it.

Tricks you need to transform something which appears fantastic, unbelievable into something plausible, credible, those I learned from journalism. The key is to tell it straight. It is done by reporters and by country folk.

Ultimately, literature is nothing but carpentry. With both you are working with reality, a material just as hard as wood.

Injections are the best thing ever invented for feeding doctors.

It is not true that people stop pursuing dreams because they grow old, they grow old because they stop pursuing dreams.

A man knows when he is growing old because he begins to look like his father.

The most important thing Paris gave me was a perspective on Latin America. It taught me the differences between Latin America and Europe and among the Latin American countries themselves through the Latins I met there.

If God hadn't rested on Sunday, He would have had time to finish the world.

The truth is that I know very few novelists who have been satisfied with the adaptation of their books for the screen.

No, not rich. I am a poor man with money, which is not the same thing.