The one man I wish I could have interviewed died yesterday. But his wisdom, collected here, will live on.
By on April 18, 2014
People often ask me: Who have you never been able to interview for the What I’ve Learned column that you’d most like to spend time with?
That man died yesterday. Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
Well, he didn’t really die. Nobody who writes great literature ever dies.
I wish I could re-create the sensation that surged through me when I first opened One Hundred Years of Solitude at the age of 22. It was like looking at stars for the first time from an untouched spot in the middle of The Amazon or The Sahara. You realize in moments like those that the world offers a much deeper and more vivid experience than you could’ve possibly imagined. You’re in God’s mind.
I will never be able to know the combustion of that book and the age of 22 again. That pulsing of cosmic electricity and excitement only visits once. But I did figure out a way to do that What I’ve Learned. I journeyed through sites on the Internet to compile some wisdom originating in Gabo’s books and interviews.
It turned a day that would have been tinged with sadness into hours of soft smiles as each nugget was uncovered. And as the maestro himself advised: “Never stop smiling not even when you're sad, someone might fall in love with your smile.”
So here it is. An interview that couldn’t be more truthful even though it never happened. What I’ve Learned, from Gabriel Garcia Marquez:
No matter what, nobody can take away the dances you’ve already had.
Just as real events are forgotten, some that never were can be in our memories as if they happened.
Sex is the consolation you have when you can't have love.
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.
Then the writing became so fluid that I sometimes felt as if I were writing for the sheer pleasure of telling a story, which may be the human condition that most resembles levitation.
Wisdom comes to us when it can no longer do any good.
The problem in public life is learning to overcome terror; the problem in married life is learning to overcome boredom.
No medicine cures what happiness cannot.
The day shit is worth money, poor people will be born without an asshole.
A person does not belong to a place until there is someone dead under the ground.
The only thing worse than bad health is a bad name.
I don't believe in God, but I'm afraid of Him.
It is not true that people stop pursuing dreams because they grow old, they grow old because they stop pursuing dreams.
Age isn't how old you are but how old you feel.
Inspiration gives no warnings.
Always remember that the most important thing in a good marriage is not happiness, but stability.
The heart's memory eliminates the bad and magnifies the good.
It is like a firstborn son: you spend your life working for him, sacrificing everything for him, and at the moment of truth he does just as he pleases.
Justice limps along, but gets there all the same.
A lie is more comfortable than doubt, more useful than love, more lasting than truth.
Crazy people are not crazy if one accepts their reasoning.
One does not love one’s children just because they are one’s children but because of the friendship formed while raising them.
Shame has a poor memory.
The world must be all fucked up when men travel first class and literature goes as freight.
He who awaits much can expect little.
A falcon who chases a warlike crane can only hope for a life of pain.
One minute of reconciliation is worth more than a whole life of friendship.
Nobody deserves your tears, but whoever deserves them will not make you cry.
I don’t think you can write a book that’s worth anything without extraordinary discipline.
A true friend is the one who holds your hand and touches your heart.
All human beings have three lives: public, private, and secret.
If men gave birth, they'd be less inconsiderate.
How strange women are.
Don't let yourself die without knowing the wonder of fucking with love.
Jealousy knows more than truth does.
I have learned that a man has the right and obligation to look down at another man, only when that man needs help to get up from the ground.
In the end, it is impossible not to become what others believe you are.
Ceasing to believe caused a permanent scar in the place where one's faith had been, making it impossible to forget.
One ages more and with more intensity in pictures than in reality.
With The Thousand and One Nights, I learned and never forgot that we should read only those books that force us to reread them.
I can't think of any film that improved on a good novel, but I can think of many good films that came from very bad novels.
Literature was the best plaything that had ever been invented to make fun of people.
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.
Fame is very agreeable, but the bad thing is that it goes on 24 hours a day.
Fiction has helped my journalism because it has given it literary value. Journalism has helped my fiction because it has kept me in a close relationship with reality.
To all, I would say how mistaken they are when they think that they stop falling in love when they grow old, without knowing that they grow old when they stop falling in love...
There is always something left to love.
Courage did not come from the need to survive, or from a brute indifference inherited from someone else, but from a driving need for love which no obstacle in this world or the next world will break.
The secret of a good old age is simply an honorable pact with solitude.
Nobody teaches life anything.
The only regret I will have in dying is if it is not for love.
Be calm. God awaits you at the door.
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