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

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

Fiction was invented the day Jonas arrived home and told his wife that he was three days late because he had been swallowed by a whale.

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

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

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

She discovered with great delight that one does not love one's children just because they are one's children but because of the friendship formed while raising them.

A person doesn't die when he should but when he can.

I don't believe in God, but I'm afraid of Him.

Always remember that the most important thing in a good marriage is not happiness, but stability.

He who awaits much can expect little.

Injections are the best thing ever invented for feeding doctors.

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

The problem with marriage is that it ends every night after making love, and it must be rebuilt every morning before breakfast.

Nobody deserves your tears, but whoever deserves them will not make you cry.

An early-rising man is a good spouse but a bad husband.

Everything that goes into my mouth seems to make me fat, everything that comes out of my mouth embarrasses me.

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

What matters in life is not what happens to you but what you remember and how you remember it.

Necessity has the face of a dog.

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

Fame is very agreeable, but the bad thing is that it goes on 24 hours a day.

From the moment I wrote 'Leaf Storm' I realized I wanted to be a writer and that nobody could stop me and that the only thing left for me to do was to try to be the best writer in the world.

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.

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.

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.

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.

People spend a lifetime thinking about how they would really like to live. I asked my friends and no one seems to know very clearly. To me it's very clear now. I wish my life could have been like the years when I was writing 'Love in the Time of Cholera.'

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.

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.

This should be the spirit every Monday. Know that something good will always happen.

Take advantage of it now, while you are young, and suffer all you can, because these things don't last your whole life.

Become a better person and be sure to know who you are before meeting someone new and hoping that person knows who you are

It always amuses me that the biggest praise for my work comes for the imagination while the truth is that theres 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.

Crazy people are not crazy if one accepts their reasoning.

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

He thought that the world would make more rapid progress without the burden of old people.

Nobody deserves your tears but whoever deserves them will not make you cry.

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.

Sex is the consolation you have when you can't have love.

To oppression, plundering and abandonment, we respond with life.

One minute of reconciliation is worth more than a whole life of friendship!

Don't struggle so much, the best things happen when not expected.

Judaism has always been a strong interest of mine. My two sons speak Hebrew and are familiar with the scriptures and with rabbinic literature. This is the way we live.

Examples one finds in the philosophical literature are somebody who's seen the trial of a child of theirs, where they're being proved guilty of some crime that would drive the parent into a depression, maybe a suicidal depression.

During our stay in London for the first time I was able to establish personal contact with some of the organic chemists, whose work I knew and admired from the literature. I found them most gracious and helpful.

The decline of literature indicates the decline of a nation.