Gabriel Garcia Marquez discusses inspiration

In the Winter 1981 issue of The Paris Review, Nobel Prize winning novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez discusses inspiration. (Read the entire interview at The Paris Review.) Here are some excerpts:

I can only work in surroundings that are familiar and have already been warmed up with my work. I cannot write in hotels or borrowed rooms or on borrowed typewriters. This creates problems because when I travel I can’t work…You hope for inspiration whatever the circumstances…

I’m convinced that there is a special state of mind in which you can write with great ease and things just flow. All the pretexts—such as the one where you can only write at home—disappear. That moment and that state of mind seem to come when you have found the right theme and the right ways of treating it. And it has to be something you really like, too, because there is no worse job than doing something you don’t like…

Inspiration is when you find the right theme, one which you really like; that makes the work much easier. Intuition, which is also fundamental to writing fiction, is a special quality which helps you to decipher what is real without needing scientific knowledge, or any other special kind of learning…For a novelist, intuition is essential. Basically it’s contrary to intellectualism, which is probably the thing that I detest most in the world—in the sense that the real world is turned into a kind of immovable theory. Intuition has the advantage that either it is, or it isn’t. You don’t struggle to try to put a round peg into a square hole.

Illustration: Gabriel Garcia Marquez by Margarita Karol, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. 

Wind and Water and Stone, poem by Octavio Paz

WIND AND WATER AND STONE
by Octavio Paz

The water hollowed the stone,

the wind dispersed the water,

the stone stopped the wind.

Water and wind and stone.


 
The wind sculpted the stone,

the stone is a cup of water,

The water runs off and is wind.

Stone and wind and water.


 
The wind sings in its turnings,

the water murmurs as it goes,

the motionless stone is quiet.

Wind and water and stone.


 
One is the other and is neither:

among their empty names

they pass and disappear,

water and stone and wind.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Octavio Paz Lozano (1914–1998) was a Mexican writer, poet, and diplomat, and the winner of the 1990 Nobel Prize for Literature. (Read more at wikipedia.org.)

PHOTO: “Water & Stone” by Samuel Collazo, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Wind and Water and Stone, poem by Octavio Paz

WIND AND WATER AND STONE
by Octavio Paz

The water hollowed the stone,

the wind dispersed the water,

the stone stopped the wind.

Water and wind and stone.


 
The wind sculpted the stone,

the stone is a cup of water,

The water runs off and is wind.

Stone and wind and water.


 
The wind sings in its turnings,

the water murmurs as it goes,

the motionless stone is quiet.

Wind and water and stone.


 
One is the other and is neither:

among their empty names

they pass and disappear,

water and stone and wind.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Octavio Paz Lozano (1914–1998) was a Mexican writer, poet, and diplomat, and the winner of the 1990 Nobel Prize for Literature. (Read more at wikipedia.org.)

PHOTO: “Water & Stone” by Samuel Collazo, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez Discusses Inspiration

In the Winter 1981 issue of The Paris Review, Nobel Prize winning novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez discusses inspiration. (Read the entire interview at The Paris Review.) Here are some excerpts:

I can only work in surroundings that are familiar and have already been warmed up with my work. I cannot write in hotels or borrowed rooms or on borrowed typewriters. This creates problems because when I travel I can’t work…You hope for inspiration whatever the circumstances…

I’m convinced that there is a special state of mind in which you can write with great ease and things just flow. All the pretexts—such as the one where you can only write at home—disappear. That moment and that state of mind seem to come when you have found the right theme and the right ways of treating it. And it has to be something you really like, too, because there is no worse job than doing something you don’t like…

Inspiration is when you find the right theme, one which you really like; that makes the work much easier. Intuition, which is also fundamental to writing fiction, is a special quality which helps you to decipher what is real without needing scientific knowledge, or any other special kind of learning…For a novelist, intuition is essential. Basically it’s contrary to intellectualism, which is probably the thing that I detest most in the world—in the sense that the real world is turned into a kind of immovable theory. Intuition has the advantage that either it is, or it isn’t. You don’t struggle to try to put a round peg into a square hole.

 Illustration: Gabriel Garcia Marquez by Margarita Karol, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.