Guillermo C. Infante

Writers rush in where publishers fear to tread and where translators fear to tread.

When I write, the first blank page, or any blank page, means nothing to me. What means something is a page that has been filled with words.

When I write, I enjoy myself so much that what is being written really needs no reader.

Watching a movie from beginning to end is like reading, because even though what you see are images, they are telling you a story.

There were influences in my life that were more important than journalism, such as comic strips and radio.

The relationship between reader and characters is very difficult. It is even more peculiar than the relationship between the writer and his characters.

So I do not consider myself a chronicler of my fatherland or even a chronicler of Havana.

Puns are a form of humor with words.

I wrote for a weekly magazine and then edited a literary magazine, but I did not really feel comfortable with the profession of journalism itself.

I was never a true journalist, I was a movie critic.

I was an avid radio fan when I was a boy, as well as a great lover of comic strips.

I think writers rush in where everybody is very frightened to tread.

I think that like all writers - and if any writer disagrees with this, then he is not a writer - I write primarily for myself.

I have assiduously avoided calling my books novels.

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.

I don't have any style.

I do not consider myself a Hispanic writer.

I describe my works as books, but my publishers in Spain, in the United States, and elsewhere insist on calling them novels.

I am the only British writer who writes in Spanish.

I am against the notion of style in itself.

I am a writer of fragments.

For me, words are just words, nothing else.

But I do not have the reader in mind when I write. No true writer does that.

I think that I've tried many times to get Cuba in my writings, especially Havana, which was once a great and fascinating city.

Titles are not only important, they are essential for me. I cannot write without a title.