Guillermo Cabrera Infante Quotes

For a creative person there's just as much pleasure in writing an eight-line poem as there is in writing a blockbuster play ... of the old '50s type.

There is no lighter burden, nor more agreeable, than a pen.

The great thing about writing is, if you don't like the world, we'll create a different one.

When you write, you want to get rid of the world, don’t you? Of course you do. When you’re writing, you’re creating your own worlds.

Writers do not write what they know. They write what they can imagine.

Authorship is not a trade, it is an inspiration; authorship does not keep an office, its habitation is all out under the sky, and everywhere the winds are blowing and the sun is shining and the creatures of God are free.

This afternoon, burn down the house. Tomorrow, pour critical water upon the simmering coals. Time enough to think and cut and rewrite tomorrow. But today-explode-f ly-apart-disint egrate! The other six or seven drafts are going to be pure torture. So why not enjoy the first draft, in the hope that your joy will seek and find others in the world who, by reading your story, will catch fire, too?

The great liberty of the fictional writer is to let the imagination out of the traces and see it gallop off over the horizon.

I'd always fantasized about writing a new play. Even when I had all this success in television, what I was daydreaming about in my dressing room is that one day I would do it.

I'd love to create my own stuff. I've always written stuff, but it would be nice to have my hand a little deeper in the clay, so to speak.

Being an author is fun. It's a great job, because I can stay up as late as I want, and if I feel like taking the day off, I do it. Plus, I get to make up silly stories and draw pictures all day.

My perfect day is sitting in a room with some blank paper. That's heaven. That's gold, and anything else is just a waste of time.

Being a fiction writer makes you someone who works with irresponsibility.

The arm which should have launched the thunderbolt was occupied in guiding the pen.

Not everyone is fortunate enough to earn their living playing. But what draws people to art and artists is a desire to enjoy the propinquity of play. For it is the very freedom of the imagination. And what else were we born to do, but imagine freely?

When you're a writer and you're an adult, that's something you crave - that limitless imagination and love for worlds that don't exist that you can create.

A sense of play is important when I'm writing, and so messing around with, say, a magic routine can feel like play, at least initially.

Whether I'm writing scripts or prose, the goal is identical. To give pleasure. Now whether I succeed or not is up for debate, and, mostly, I fail. But I try. I like to make things. It's a way to stay busy during one's ephemeral and confusing life.

If there is one thing left that I would like to do, it's to write something really beautiful. And I could do it, you know. I could still do it.

You can't learn to play the piano without playing the piano, you can't learn to write without writing, and, in many ways, you can't learn to think without thinking. Writing is thinking. To write well is to think clearly. That's why it's so hard.

Skill in writing frees you to write what you want to write. It may also show you what you want to write. Craft enables art.

Writing is magic, as much the water of life as any other creative art. The water is free. So drink. Drink and be filled up.

All there is to writing is having ideas. To learn to write is to learn to have ideas.

The creative writer does the same as the child at play; he creates a world of fantasy which he takes very seriously.

Writing songs is no different than explaining to somebody what you dreamed last night: No one ever gives you crap for what you dreamed last night. "I was laying in my bed, and all of a sudden a stallion jumped on my bed and the next thing I know I was in Mars but it looked like my kitchen"... That's kind of what I do with my songs, write them in a dream-like manner. It's up to people to swallow it however they want.