Ultimately, literature is nothing but carpentry. With both you are working with reality, a material just as hard as wood.
Meaning of the quote
This quote by Gabriel Garcia Marquez suggests that writing literature is a lot like carpentry. Both involve working with a tough, unyielding material - in the case of writing, that material is reality itself. Just like a carpenter shapes wood to create something new, a writer shapes the realities of life to craft a story or poem. The process may be challenging, but the end result can be something truly remarkable.
About Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Gabriel Jose de la Concordia Garcia Marquezwas a Colombian novelist, short-story writer, screenwriter, and journalist, known affectionately as Gaboor Gabitothroughout Latin America. Considered one of the most significant authors of the 20th century, particularly in the Spanish language, he was awarded the 1972 Neustadt International Prize for Literature and the 1982 Nobel Prize in Literature.
More quotes from Gabriel Garcia Marquez
What matters in life is not what happens to you but what you remember and how you remember it.
Colombian writer and Nobel laureate (1927-2014)
Necessity has the face of a dog.
Colombian writer and Nobel laureate (1927-2014)
An early-rising man is a good spouse but a bad husband.
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Ultimately, literature is nothing but carpentry. With both you are working with reality, a material just as hard as wood.
Colombian writer and Nobel laureate (1927-2014)
She discovered with great delight that one does not love one’s children just because they are one’s children but because of the friendship formed while raising them.
Colombian writer and Nobel laureate (1927-2014)
The problem with marriage is that it ends every night after making love, and it must be rebuilt every morning before breakfast.
Colombian writer and Nobel laureate (1927-2014)
It is not true that people stop pursuing dreams because they grow old, they grow old because they stop pursuing dreams.
Colombian writer and Nobel laureate (1927-2014)
No, not rich. I am a poor man with money, which is not the same thing.
Colombian writer and Nobel laureate (1927-2014)
A man knows when he is growing old because he begins to look like his father.
Colombian writer and Nobel laureate (1927-2014)
Nobody deserves your tears, but whoever deserves them will not make you cry.
Colombian writer and Nobel laureate (1927-2014)
A person doesn’t die when he should but when he can.
Colombian writer and Nobel laureate (1927-2014)
If God hadn’t rested on Sunday, He would have had time to finish the world.
Colombian writer and Nobel laureate (1927-2014)
The interpretation of our reality through patterns not our own, serves only to make us ever more unknown, ever less free, ever more solitary.
Colombian writer and Nobel laureate (1927-2014)
Injections are the best thing ever invented for feeding doctors.
Colombian writer and Nobel laureate (1927-2014)
Everything that goes into my mouth seems to make me fat, everything that comes out of my mouth embarrasses me.
Colombian writer and Nobel laureate (1927-2014)
I don’t believe in God, but I’m afraid of Him.
Colombian writer and Nobel laureate (1927-2014)
Always remember that the most important thing in a good marriage is not happiness, but stability.
Colombian writer and Nobel laureate (1927-2014)
He who awaits much can expect little.
Colombian writer and Nobel laureate (1927-2014)
Fiction was invented the day Jonas arrived home and told his wife that he was three days late because he had been swallowed by a whale.
Colombian writer and Nobel laureate (1927-2014)
The heart’s memory eliminates the bad and magnifies the good.
Colombian writer and Nobel laureate (1927-2014)