Guillermo Cabrera Infante Quotes

I can tell you that I never begin working on a story until I have a title centered at the top of the first page.

I have an ideas book at home with far more ideas than I will ever be able to write.

You can't sit down and decide what you want to write about.

A lot of my ideas for books come from newspaper articles. But I don't like to be actively looking for ideas.

Sit down to write what you have thought, and not to think about what you shall write.

I don't have writer's block, really. I do have times when I can't get the lead, and that is the only part of the story which I have serious trouble with. I don't write a word of the article until I have the lead. It just sets the whole tone - the whole point of view.

When I don't have any story in my mind, I am busy doing foundation work.

A lot of young writers ask me about my process. They know what they want to write - but they need to know how. What's the right way? How do the professionals do it? What's the secret?

I really want to write another novel, and I am trying to come up with what the story will be. As I learned with 'Groundswell,' I can't force it; I just have to wait for it to come to me.

Readers would email me and say, 'Please write a novel about so-and-so,' but it has to come from yourself and not so much from your readership.

I have these huge black foam boards on the wall, and tacked to them, I have these white punch cards with my story ideas, scenes and notes.

When I'm the one who sits down and looks at the blank page and writes it out all the way, then I'll call it my script.

Sometimes I'll have an idea for a story or have a subject, and that will inspire lyrics, but most of the time, hopefully, they already exist somewhere else.

They say it is the first step that costs the effort. I do not find it so. I am sure I could write unlimited 'first chapters'. I have indeed written many.

Blank paper has always inspired me.

And once I know what the first page is, then the rest will come.

I just write the books that I think I would want to read.

Love is the answer to everything. It's the only reason to do anything. If you don't write stories you love, you'll never make it. If you don't write stories that other people love, you'll never make it.

The best ideas are those that really affect me emotionally - those are the ones you never forget. You think to yourself, 'I want to write that book', for years; those are the ideas that I love to work with, and 'The Bone Garden' was one of them.

Of course I planned to write the Great American Novel; that lasted about a week, at which point I decided I had nothing to say that could possibly qualify. So I wrote a romance instead.

Neophyte writers tend to believe that there is something magical about ideas and that if they can just get a hold of a good one, then their futures are ensured.

I think I settled on the title before I ever wrote the book.

My books start almost before I realise it. Once in a while, some accident causes an idea to rise to the surface and say: 'now.'

It was a combination of an intense interest in children's literature, which I've always had, and the feeling that I'd just have a go and see if I could do it.

One thing I always did in my career was writing. I always was writing. I was trying to create things. For myself, for other people.