I’m Not Here to Give a Speech

Gabriel García Márquez

Gabo Speaks – In these 21 speeches, the Nobel Prize winner lyrically addresses numerous subjects, from cinema to literature to Latin America and politics to friendship and love. His whimsical voice is unmistakable, his profound insight so dearly missed from commenting on our world today. And still, his words continue to live, and his commentary remains accurate. “As I have tried to show in some of my books – if not in all of them – I trust more in these absurdities of reality than in theoretical dreams that most of the time serve only to muzzle a bad conscience,” Márquez says in 2003 remarks recorded for the 200^th anniversary of the University of Antioquia in Colombia. He adds later, “I would dare to believe that the dream of Don Miguel de Cervantes is now at the right point for us to glimpse the dawn of a calmer time, that the evil that overwhelms us will last much less time than the good, and that on our boundless creativity alone depends knowing now which of the many roads are the right ones, in order to experience them in the peace of the living and enjoy them by right and for ever more. Amen.”