Guillermo Cabrera Infante Quotes

A good smoker, like a good lover, always takes his time with a cigar.

I was never a true journalist, I was a movie critic.

I think writers rush in where everybody is very frightened to tread

I think that I've tried many times to get Cuba in my writings, especially Havana, which was once a great and fascinating city.

When I write, the first blank page, or any blank page, means nothing to me. What means something is a page that has been filled with words.

Cigars must be smoked one at a time, peaceably, with all the leisure in the world. Cigarettes are of the instant, Cigars are for eternity.

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

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

What I do believe is that there is always a relationship between writing and reading, a constant interplay between the writer on the one hand and the reader on the other

Writing for me, even what you call serious writing, is play.

If the sleep of reason produces monsters, what does the sleep of unreason produce?

I believe that writers, unless they consider themselves terribly exquisite, are at heart people who live by night, a little bit outside society, moving between delinquency and conformity

I read the Odyssey because it was the story of a man who returned home after being absent for more than twenty years and was recognized only by his dog.

My parents were founders of the Cuban Communist Party, and I grew up extremely poor.

I know that many writers have had to write under censorship and yet produced good novels; for instance, Cervantes wrote Don Quixote under Catholic censorship.

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

For me, literature is a complex game, both mental and concrete, which is acted out in a physical manner on the page.

When I write, I enjoy myself so much that what is being written really needs no reader

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

It means that no matter what you write, be it a biography, an autobiography, a detective novel, or a conversation on the street, it all becomes fiction as soon as you write it down.

No, absolutely not, writing doesn't have to be like a jigsaw puzzle, it can be a very linear undertaking.

I have assiduously avoided calling my books novels

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

I think all writing is done through memory

American literature had always considered writing a very serious matter

I left my country because I was forced to, and I do not think that I am going to lose my language because I live in England

I am against the notion of style in itself

There were influences in my life that were more important than journalism, such as comic strips and radio.

I am the only British writer who writes in Spanish

I am a writer of fragments.

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

I first came out against Castro in June 1968, fifteen months after my book had been published, and you cannot imagine how quickly a void was created around me

The relationship between reader and characters is very difficult. It is even more peculiar than the relationship between the writer and his characters.

Well, I write in exile because I cannot return to my country, so I have no choice but to see myself as an exiled writer.

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

Puns are a form of humor with words.

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

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

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

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

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

Many of my books have begun with the title, because naming a work already in progress makes no sense to me.

I have one main reader, Miriam Gomez, my wife. She reads everything I write - I have not finished writing something and she is already reading it.

I don't have any style.

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.

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

I do not consider myself a Hispanic writer.

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

Writers rush in where publishers fear to tread and where translators fear to tread