Books for all the world are always foul-smelling books: the smell of small people clings to them.
Books are the most wonderful friends in the world. When you meet them and pick them up, they are always ready to give you a few ideas. When you put them down, they never get mad; when you take them up again, they seem to enrich you all the more.
The Rosary is the book of the blind.
Any book which inspires us to lead a better life is a good book.
We sometimes encounter people, even perfect strangers, who begin to interest us at first sight, somehow suddenly, all at once, before a word has been spoken.
Well, I was a big fan of the book and therein a huge fan of the girl Precious. And so I felt like I knew this girl. I felt like I’d grown up alongside her. I felt like she was in my family. She was my friend and she was like people I didn’t want to be friends with.
I’ve grown up with girls that are like Precious. I’ve grown up with people that are like everyone that I read about in that book. And so years later, when I was given the role, I just felt a huge responsibility to show the reality of that situation and to show that we’re not making it up.
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.
The truth is that I know very few novelists who have been satisfied with the adaptation of their books for the screen.
Between the covers of the books that no one had ever read again, in the old parchments damaged by dampness, a livid flower had prospered, and in the air that had been the purest and brightest in the house an unbearable smell of rotten memories floated.
In the end all books are written for your friends.
I would like for my books to have been recognized posthumously, at least in capitalist countries, where they turn you into a kind of merchandise.
Most critics don’t realize that a novel like One Hundred Years of Solitude is a bit of a joke, full of signals to close friends; and so, with some pre-ordained right to pontificate they take on the responsibility of decoding the book and risk making terrible fools of themselves.
Faulkner is a writer who has had much to do with my soul, but Hemingway is the one who had the most to do with my craft – not simply for his books, but for his astounding knowledge of the aspect of craftsmanship in the science of writing.
I must warn you that the books I like are not necessarily the ones I think are the best. I like them for various reasons not always easy to explain.
Keep away from books and from men who get their ideas from books, and your own books will always be fresh.
Only in books has mankind known perfect truth, love and beauty.
Censorship ends in logical completeness when nobody is allowed to read any books except the books that nobody reads.
How can you dare teach a man to read until you’ve taught him everything else first?
Two people getting together to write a book is like three people getting together to have a baby. One of them is superfluous.