Gabriel García Márquez

The writing became so fluid that I sometimes felt as if I were writing for the sheer pleasure of telling a story, which may be the human condition that most resembles levitation.
-Gabriel García Márquez

He repeated until his dying day that there was no one with more common sense, no stonecutter more obstinate, no manager more lucid or dangerous, than a poet.
-Gabriel García Márquez, Love in the Time of Cholera

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.
-Gabriel García Márquez, The Paris Review

No doubt, my influences, especially in Colombia, are extra-literary. More than any book, I think what opened my eyes was music, vallenato songs.
-Gabriel García Márquez, El Manifesto

Home is where your books are, they say, but for me it's where my recordings are. I've got more than five thousand of them.
-Gabriel García Márquez, El Manifesto

My literary background was basically in poetry.
-Gabriel García Márquez, El Manifesto

Then at night, after everyone had gone home, I would stay behind writing my novels. I liked the noise of the Linotype machines, which sounded like rain. If they stopped, and I was left in silence, I wouldn't be able to work. Now, the output is comparatively small.
-Gabriel García Márquez, The Paris Review

Ultimately literature is nothing but carpentry. Both are very hard work. Writing something is almost as hard as making a table. With both you are working with reality, a material just as hard as wood. Both are full of tricks and techniques. Basically very little magic and a lot of hard work involved.
-Gabriel García Márquez

In every novel, the character is a collage: a collage of different characters that you've known, or heard about or read about.
-Gabriel García Márquez, The Paris Review