Top 81 Quotes & Sayings by Guillermo Cabrera Infante - Page 2

American literature had always considered writing a very serious matter

A very wise author once said that a writer writes for himself, and then publishes for money. I write for myself and publish just for the reader

Dialogue in fiction is always written to be read in silence. The page is the limit. Dialogue on stage and on the screen is meant to be spoken. The voice is the limit.

I wrote for a weekly magazine and then edited a literary magazine, but I did not really feel comfortable with the profession of journalism itself

I have assiduously avoided calling my books novels

I describe my works as books, but my publishers in Spain, in the United States, and elsewhere insist on calling them novels

Titles are not only important, they are essential for me. I cannot write without a title

I don't much believe in the idea of characters. I write with words, that is all. Whether those words are put in the mouth of this or that character does not matter to me

I do not believe in inspiration, but I must have a title in order to work, otherwise I am lost

Tobacco is the opiate of the gentleman, the religion of the rich.

I was an avid radio fan when I was a boy, as well as a great lover of comic strips

You are just in the middle of a struggle with words which are really very stubborn things, with a blank page, with the damn thing that you use to write with, a pen or a typewriter, and you forget all about the reader when you are doing that

So I do not consider myself a chronicler of my fatherland or even a chronicler of Havana

I am the only British writer who writes in Spanish

I am against the notion of style in itself

I was able to read a movie before I was able to read a book

I think that like all writers - and if any writer disagrees with this, then he is not a writer - I write primarily for myself

But I do not have the reader in mind when I write. No true writer does that

I live in London and I am a British subject, although I do write in Spanish, of course

Watching a movie from beginning to end is like reading, because even though what you see are images, they are telling you a story

For me, words are just words, nothing else