Guillermo Cabrera Infante Quotes
A Cuban novelist, essayist, translator, and critic; in the 1950s he used the pseudonym G. Caín.
(1929 - 2005)
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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.
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American literature had always considered writing a very serious matter.
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But I do not have the reader in mind when I write. No true writer does that.
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For me, literature is a complex game, both mental and concrete, which is acted out in a physical manner on the page.
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For me, words are just words, nothing else.
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I am a writer of fragments.
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I am against the notion of style in itself.
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I am the only British writer who writes in Spanish.
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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.
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I describe my works as books, but my publishers in Spain, in the United States, and elsewhere insist on calling them novels.
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I do not believe in inspiration, but I must have a title in order to work, otherwise I am lost.
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I do not consider myself a Hispanic writer.
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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.
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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.
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I have assiduously avoided calling my books novels.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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I live in London and I am a British subject, although I do write in Spanish, of course.
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