A critic never made or killed a book or a play. The people themselves are the final judges. It is their opinion that counts. After all, the final test is truth. But the trouble is that most writers regard truth as their most valuable possession and therefore are most economical in its use.
Advice to writers: Sometimes you just have to stop writing. Even before you begin.
The less somebody knows and understand himself the less great he is, however great may be his talent. For this reason our scientists are not great.
If a writer wrote merely for his time, I would have to break my pen and throw it away.
Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do, and... Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.
Draughtsmen may be made, but colourists are born.
Seamen have a custom, when they meet a whale, to fling him out an empty tub by way of amusement, to divert him from laying violent hands upon the ship.
For me, writing is a job. I do not separate the work from the act of writing like two things that have nothing to do with each other. I arrange words one after another, or one in front of another, to tell a story, to say something that I consider important or useful, or at least important or useful to me. It is nothing more than this.
One of the best side effects of the boom in Latin American writing is that publishers are always on the lookout to make sure that they're not going to miss the new Cortázar. Unfortunately many young writers are more concerned with fame than with their own work.
If economists could manage to get themselves thought of as humble, competent people on a level with dentists, that would be splendid.