Alejo Carpentier

“For the marvelous begins to be unmistakably marvelous when it arises from an unexpected alteration of reality (a miracle).”

“But what is the history of America all of Latin America? It is a chronicle of the marvelous real.”

“The only race is the human race.”

“In Latin America, everything is disproportionate.”

“Time narrows and stretches, and its riverbanks are widening.”

“The authentic man is the one who discovers his vocation through the exercise of it.”

“My characters are galley slaves.”

“There are moments in which the hand is more intelligent than the head.”

“Life is a task that is imposed on us without our having asked for it.”

“Baroque is what has a horror of a vacuum, of the empty surface, of the straight and parallel line.”

“The greatest work of art is to be a man.”