Gabriel Garcia Marquez, The Art of Fiction No. 69 (1981)(theparisreview.org)
theparisreview.org
Gabriel Garcia Marquez, The Art of Fiction No. 69 (1981)
http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/3196/the-art-of-fiction-no-69-gabriel-garcia-marquez
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He says writing the first paragraph is the most difficult part of writing a novel, and that he would take as much as several hours to write a single paragraph back then. Yet, he effortlessly comes up with sentences that could very well be the beginning of ridiculously beaultiful stories, such as:
"It always amuses me that the biggest praise for my work comes for the imagination, while the truth is that there’s not a single line in all my work that does not have a basis in reality. The problem is that Caribbean reality resembles the wildest imagination."
"It always amuses me that the biggest praise for my work comes for the imagination, while the truth is that there’s not a single line in all my work that does not have a basis in reality. The problem is that Caribbean reality resembles the wildest imagination."
"One night a friend lent me a book of short stories by Franz Kafka. I went back to the pension where I was staying and began to read The Metamorphosis. The first line almost knocked me off the bed. I was so surprised. The first line reads, “As Gregor Samsa awoke that morning from uneasy dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect. . . .” When I read the line I thought to myself that I didn’t know anyone was allowed to write things like that. If I had known, I would have started writing a long time ago."