One Hundred Years of Solitude

“When I started writing One Hundred Years of Solitude, I wanted to find a way to convey through literature everything that had affected me in my childhood. My aim was to leave behind, in an artistic language, my childhood days, which were spent in a very gloomy huge house - among a sister who ate dirt - a grandmother who foresaw the future - and a bunch of relatives with similar names - who did not discriminate between happiness and madness. I wrote One Hundred Years of Solitude in less than two years—but it took me fifteen to sixteen years to think about it before I sat down at my typewriter. My grandmother would tell me the cruelest things without even moving a muscle, as if they were just ordinary things she saw. I realized that what makes the stories he tells so valuable is his emotionless attitude and the richness of his images. I wrote One Hundred Years of Solitude using this method of my grandmother. I have met ordinary people who read this novel with attention and pleasure and were not surprised at all. They were not surprised - because I had not told them anything new in their lives - you will not find a single sentence in my book that is not based on reality.”