‘Love is the only thing that interests me’

‘El amor en los tiempos del colera’, a great novel by Garcia-Marquez, I would say his best one (maybe I am biased though as love stories are my greatest weakness …)

There is a great scene (one of the most memorable for me, although indeed there are so many equally powerful ones) when lovesick Florentino Ariza, goes to work with his uncle, he is told off for his inability to write even a simple commercial letter without romantic poetry creeping in. “It’s no use,” protests Florentino, “Love is the only thing that interests me.”

I often am asked why I am attached to affairs of the heart which are so central to my writing. My reply is the same.

Writers are grumpy people …?

A few weeks ago,  news was just in that Colombian literary giant and Nobel Prize winner Gabriel Garcia-Marquez had declared to the world that he would never write again.

Days ago, it was revealed that he would write but not publish. El Tiempo, the Colombian newspaper which reported this also went onto say that Garcia-Marquez had become so grumpy that he told the reporter to leave him alone as he had writing to be getting on with.

So as well as being potentially disturbed, are writers also grumpy people??

* my one penny comes to mind. oh blast!