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

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.

Some men never recover from education.

I imagine music sitting in a chair across from me saying "and how does that make you feel?".

I've met the most interesting people while flying or on a boat. These methods of travel seem to attract the kind of people I want to be with.

The object of oratory alone is not truth but persuasion.

No one thinks of how much blood it costs.

Recorded music is more a marketing tool than a revenue source.

I feel the responsibility to make things which on some level have something positive to say.

All the arts, which have a tendency to raise man in the scale of being, have a certain common band of union, and are connected, if I may be allowed to say so, by blood-relationship with one another.

The human voice is the most beautiful instrument of all, but the most difficult to play.

The Earth turns to Gold, in the hands of the wise.