Guillermo Cabrera Infante Quotes

I write in a pretty straightforward way. I kind of sit down at page one and start writing.

There are a lot of elements when you're writing, or when I'm writing, that are sitting in the back of your mind. I try to let them stay there, because they find their way in more naturally that way.

I wrote two plotted books, got some of the fundamentals of storytelling down, then... it's sort of like taking the training wheels off, trying to write a book that's fun in the same way without relying on quite such mechanical or external beats.

Ultimately, it's about the quality of the writing whatever style you are writing.

If you have a craftsman's command of the language and basic writing techniques you'll be able to write - as long as you know what you want to say.

It's very hard to articulate the things that are important about writing.

I think that writers are best served by sticking to their writing. Not having loads of theories about the best way to position the writing. I think that if the writing is good and the point of view is strong, the writing is going to take care of itself.

I write. This is what I do. My job is to sit down with my vocabulary, select words, and decide what order they should be placed in an attempt to keep someone's attention and perhaps provide them with a laugh or two along the way.

I write short stories. I write every day.

I'm here to get the story on to the page. It would be good to catch your attention, and I have to make you want to read on, and I suppose I prefer you don't actually think about the 'how' at all - the writing technique, the 'style', or even who it is that's putting this together.

Write in a disciplined manner, but write in a way that is natural to the individual's thought processes.

I resist when someone calls me a novelist: it implies some kind of inherent superiority of the novel. I'm not a novelist, I'm a writer.

What one's goal should be is just to become a better writer and to tell different kinds of stories.

I just do the best I can and write something interesting, to tell stories in an interesting way and move forward from there.

I write easily, let's put it that way. And in a novel particularly, the characters take over. And they tell me what to say and they tell me what they're doing. And I'm a third of the way into a novel and then I just let the characters finish it for me.

Struggling writers are often advised to pick a simple genre, but it doesn't work that way.

For me as a writer, the story has always taken precedence over everything else. I have never sat down to write with broad, sweeping ideas in mind, and certainly never with a specific agenda.

I don't really do themes. I might accidentally, but themes are an emergent phenomena of the writing of the book, of just trying to get a story out there.

I have heard of novels started in the middle, at the end, written in patches to be joined together later, but I have never felt the slightest desire to do this.

If you are a good writer - and I think I am - you are able to handle any kind of group and imagine their lives.

Column writing is like gas - it fills the available space.

My aim is to put down on paper what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way.

Only a reader can become a writer. Develop a lively intellect and the ability to become interested in anything, no matter how mundane it might seem at first. Look for the story. Develop an eye for detail. Feed your mind and your brain: learn as much as you can about everything you can.

I don't card out my screenplays ever. I just have an idea I just sit down and write I don't edit.

I don't really think in terms of making something that is going to be bought everywhere, because I don't read those things. My writing is a process in which I try my best to make good sentences and a sequence of events that is compelling and believable.