Gabriel García Márquez: 40 Notable Quotes
Gabriel García Márquez (born March 6, 1927, Aracataca, Colombia – died April 17, 2014, Mexico City, Mexico) was a Colombian novelist, short story writer, and journalist, considered one of the greatest writers of the 20th century.
Márquez’s most important works include novels One Hundred Years of Solitude (Cien años de soledad, 1967) and Love in the Time of Cholera (El amor en los tiempos del cólera, 1985), and novellas The Leaf Storm (La Hojarasca, 1955), Memories of My Melancholy Whores (Memoria de mis putas tristes, 2004), and No One Writes to the Colonel (El coronel no tiene quien le escriba, 1961).
In 1982, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, “for his novels and short stories, in which the fantastic and the realistic are combined in a richly composed world of imagination, reflecting a continent’s life and conflicts.”
A lie is more comfortable than doubt, more useful than love, more lasting than truth.The Autumn of the Patriarch (1975)
No, not rich, I am a poor man with money, which is not the same thing.Love in the Time of Cholera (1985)
All human beings have three lives: public, private, and secret.Gabriel García Márquez: a Life by Gerald Martin (1997)
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 (1985)
It’s enough for me to be sure that you and I exist at this moment.Chapter 20, One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967)
No matter what, nobody can take away the dances you’ve already had.Chapter 5, Memories of My Melancholy Whores (2004)
A man knows when he is growing old because he begins to look like his father.Love in the Time of Cholera (1985)
Ultimately, literature is nothing but carpentry.The Art of Fiction No. 69 by Peter Stone, in The Paris Review No. 82 (Winter 1981)
If God had not rested on Sunday He would have had time to finish the world properly.Montiel's Widow in Big Mama's Funeral (1962)
Sex is the consolation you have when you can’t have love.Chapter 3, Memories of My Melancholy Whores (2004)
A person doesn’t die when he should but when he can.Chapter 12, One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967)
The interpretation of our reality through patterns not our own, serves only to make us ever more unknown, ever less free, ever more solitary.Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech (December 8, 1982)
If you wait for the big things, you can wait for the little ones.Chapter III, No One Writes to the Colonel (1961)
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 (1985)
Fame is very agreeable, but the bad thing is that it goes on 24 hours a day.A Talk with Gabriel García Márquez by Marlise Simons, in The New York Times (December 5, 1982)
The only difference today between Liberals and Conservatives is that the Liberals go to mass at five o’clock and the Conservatives at eight.Chapter 12, One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967)
Human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them, but that life obliges them over and over again to give birth to themselves.Love in the Time of Cholera (1985)
Crazy people are not crazy if one accepts their reasoning.Chapter Two, Of Love and Other Demons (1994)
The world must be all f***ed up when men travel first class and literature goes as freight.Chapter 20, One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967)
Most fatal diseases had their own specific odor, but that none was as specific as old age.Love in the Time of Cholera (1985)
It is not true that people stop pursuing dreams because they grow old, they grow old because they stop pursuing dreams.Gabriel García Márquez's Facebook (Jun 23, 2011)
The secret of a good old age is simply an honorable pact with solitude.Chapter 10, One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967)
Humanity, like armies in the field, advances at the speed of the slowest.Love in the Time of Cholera (1985)
One minute of reconciliation is worth more than a whole life of friendship.Chapter 14, One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967)
One does not love one’s children just because they are one’s children but because of the friendship formed while raising them.Love in the Time of Cholera (1985)
A person does not belong to a place until there is someone dead under the ground.Chapter 1, One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967)
Nobody deserves your tears, but whoever deserves them will not make you cry.Gabriel García Márquez's Facebook (Jun 29, 2011)
Ceasing to believe caused a permanent scar in the place where one’s faith had been, making it impossible to forget.Chapter Three, Of Love and Other Demons (1994)
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.The Art of Fiction No. 69 by Peter Stone, in The Paris Review No. 82 (Winter 1981)
In the end, it is impossible not to become what others believe you are.Chapter 5, Memories of My Melancholy Whores (2004)
Literature was the best plaything that had ever been invented to make fun of people.Chapter 19, One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967)
Life is not what one lived, but what one remembers and how one remembers it in order to recount it.Dedication, Living to Tell the Tale (2002)
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Everything that goes into my mouth seems to make me fat, everything that comes out of my mouth embarrasses me.No source