1.
I was never a true journalist, I was a movie critic.
Guillermo Cabrera Infante
2.
A good smoker, like a good lover, always takes his time with a cigar.
Guillermo Cabrera Infante
3.
I think writers rush in where everybody is very frightened to tread
Guillermo Cabrera Infante
4.
I think that I've tried many times to get Cuba in my writings, especially Havana, which was once a great and fascinating city.
Guillermo Cabrera Infante
5.
When I write, the first blank page, or any blank page, means nothing to me. What means something is a page that has been filled with words.
Guillermo Cabrera Infante
6.
My mother had been educated at a convent, and she had been converted to communism by my father during Stalin's most rampant period, at the beginning of the 1930s. So she had two gods, God in heaven and god on earth.
Guillermo Cabrera Infante
7.
Cigars must be smoked one at a time, peaceably, with all the leisure in the world. Cigarettes are of the instant, Cigars are for eternity.
Guillermo Cabrera Infante
8.
I was an avid radio fan when I was a boy, as well as a great lover of comic strips
Guillermo Cabrera Infante
9.
So I do not consider myself a chronicler of my fatherland or even a chronicler of Havana
Guillermo Cabrera Infante
10.
What I do believe is that there is always a relationship between writing and reading, a constant interplay between the writer on the one hand and the reader on the other
Guillermo Cabrera Infante
11.
Writing for me, even what you call serious writing, is play.
Guillermo Cabrera Infante
12.
If the sleep of reason produces monsters, what does the sleep of unreason produce?
Guillermo Cabrera Infante
13.
If you look closely, there is no book more visual than Three Trapped Tigers, in that it is filled with blank pages, dark pages, it has stars made of words, the famous magical cube made of numbers, and there is even a page which is a mirror.
Guillermo Cabrera Infante
14.
I believe that writers, unless they consider themselves terribly exquisite, are at heart people who live by night, a little bit outside society, moving between delinquency and conformity
Guillermo Cabrera Infante
15.
My parents were founders of the Cuban Communist Party, and I grew up extremely poor.
Guillermo Cabrera Infante
16.
I read the Odyssey because it was the story of a man who returned home after being absent for more than twenty years and was recognized only by his dog.
Guillermo Cabrera Infante
17.
I know that many writers have had to write under censorship and yet produced good novels; for instance, Cervantes wrote Don Quixote under Catholic censorship.
Guillermo Cabrera Infante
18.
I don't much believe in the idea of characters. I write with words, that is all. Whether those words are put in the mouth of this or that character does not matter to me
Guillermo Cabrera Infante
19.
For me, literature is a complex game, both mental and concrete, which is acted out in a physical manner on the page.
Guillermo Cabrera Infante
20.
You are just in the middle of a struggle with words which are really very stubborn things, with a blank page, with the damn thing that you use to write with, a pen or a typewriter, and you forget all about the reader when you are doing that
Guillermo Cabrera Infante
21.
I have assiduously avoided calling my books novels
Guillermo Cabrera Infante
22.
When I write, I enjoy myself so much that what is being written really needs no reader
Guillermo Cabrera Infante
23.
No, absolutely not, writing doesn't have to be like a jigsaw puzzle, it can be a very linear undertaking.
Guillermo Cabrera Infante
24.
It means that no matter what you write, be it a biography, an autobiography, a detective novel, or a conversation on the street, it all becomes fiction as soon as you write it down.
Guillermo Cabrera Infante
25.
I describe my works as books, but my publishers in Spain, in the United States, and elsewhere insist on calling them novels
Guillermo Cabrera Infante
26.
American literature had always considered writing a very serious matter
Guillermo Cabrera Infante
27.
Titles are not only important, they are essential for me. I cannot write without a title
Guillermo Cabrera Infante
28.
I live in London and I am a British subject, although I do write in Spanish, of course
Guillermo Cabrera Infante
29.
There were influences in my life that were more important than journalism, such as comic strips and radio.
Guillermo Cabrera Infante
30.
I am the only British writer who writes in Spanish
Guillermo Cabrera Infante
31.
I am against the notion of style in itself
Guillermo Cabrera Infante
32.
I first came out against Castro in June 1968, fifteen months after my book had been published, and you cannot imagine how quickly a void was created around me
Guillermo Cabrera Infante
33.
I am a writer of fragments.
Guillermo Cabrera Infante
34.
I think all writing is done through memory
Guillermo Cabrera Infante
35.
I left my country because I was forced to, and I do not think that I am going to lose my language because I live in England
Guillermo Cabrera Infante
36.
The relationship between reader and characters is very difficult. It is even more peculiar than the relationship between the writer and his characters.
Guillermo Cabrera Infante
37.
I wrote for a weekly magazine and then edited a literary magazine, but I did not really feel comfortable with the profession of journalism itself
Guillermo Cabrera Infante
38.
Well, I write in exile because I cannot return to my country, so I have no choice but to see myself as an exiled writer.
Guillermo Cabrera Infante
39.
Puns are a form of humor with words.
Guillermo Cabrera Infante
40.
A very wise author once said that a writer writes for himself, and then publishes for money. I write for myself and publish just for the reader
Guillermo Cabrera Infante
41.
I was able to read a movie before I was able to read a book
Guillermo Cabrera Infante
42.
I think that like all writers - and if any writer disagrees with this, then he is not a writer - I write primarily for myself
Guillermo Cabrera Infante
43.
Many of my books have begun with the title, because naming a work already in progress makes no sense to me.
Guillermo Cabrera Infante
44.
I don't have any style.
Guillermo Cabrera Infante
45.
I have one main reader, Miriam Gomez, my wife. She reads everything I write - I have not finished writing something and she is already reading it.
Guillermo Cabrera Infante
46.
Dialogue in fiction is always written to be read in silence. The page is the limit. Dialogue on stage and on the screen is meant to be spoken. The voice is the limit.
Guillermo Cabrera Infante
47.
Watching a movie from beginning to end is like reading, because even though what you see are images, they are telling you a story
Guillermo Cabrera Infante
48.
For me, words are just words, nothing else
Guillermo Cabrera Infante
49.
I do not believe in inspiration, but I must have a title in order to work, otherwise I am lost
Guillermo Cabrera Infante
50.
But I do not have the reader in mind when I write. No true writer does that
Guillermo Cabrera Infante
