It always amuses me that the biggest praise for my work comes for the imagination, while the truth is that there's not a single line in all my work that does not have a basis in reality. The problem is that Caribbean reality resembles the wildest imagination."
From The Paris Review Interviews, Gabriel García Márquez, The Art of Fiction No. 69
All human beings have three lives: public, private, and secret.”
Gabriel García Márquez: a Life
Fiction was invented the day Jonah arrived home and told his wife that he was three days late because he had been swallowed by a whale."
The problem with marriage is that it ends every night after making love, and it must be rebuilt every morning before breakfast."
Love in the Time of Cholera
Sex is the consolation you have when you can't have love."
Memories of My Melancholy Whores
It is not true that people stop pursuing dreams because they grow old, they grow old because they stop pursuing dreams."
Age has no reality except in the physical world. The essence of a human being is resistant to the passage of time. Our inner lives are eternal, which is to say that our spirits remain as youthful and vigorous as when we were in full bloom. Think of love as a state of grace, not the means to anything, but the alpha and omega. An end in itself."
Love in the Time of Cholera
Nothing resembles a person as much as the way he dies."
Love in the Time of Cholera
My heart has more rooms in it than a whore house.”
Love in the Time of Cholera
But when a woman decides to sleep with a man, there is no wall she will not scale, no fortress she will not destroy, no moral consideration she will not ignore at its very root: there is no God worth worrying about."
Love in the Time of Cholera
The problem in public life is learning to overcome terror; the problem in married life is learning to overcome boredom."
Love in the Time of Cholera
I don't believe in God, but I'm afraid of Him."
Love in the Time of Cholera
He soon acquired the forlorn look that one sees in vegetarians."
One Hundred Years of Solitude
If I knew that today would be the last time I’d see you, I would hug you tight and pray the Lord be the keeper of your soul. If I knew that this would be the last time you pass through this door, I’d embrace you, kiss you, and call you back for one more. If I knew that this would be the last time I would hear your voice, I’d take hold of each word to be able to hear it over and over again. If I knew this is the last time I see you, I’d tell you I love you, and would not just assume foolishly you know it already."
from The Guardian
