I am the only British writer who writes in Spanish

A good smoker, like a good lover, always takes his time with a cigar.

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

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

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

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.

Cigars must be smoked one at a time, peaceably, with all the leisure in the world. Cigarettes are of the instant, Cigars are for eternity.

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

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

What I do believe is that there is always a relationship between writing and reading, a constant interplay between the writer on the one hand and the reader on the other

Writing for me, even what you call serious writing, is play.

The most important step in developing skillful speech is to think before speaking.

Family is everything!” he always said when he went overboard with sentimentality. “If you don’t have family, what do you have?

The process of grieving any loss is dependent upon your relationship to the person.

Hope is a gaze on a higher power to meet our every need.

You can't manufacture the feeling of being in a small crowd and connecting on every single level to the very last person in the very last row in the back.

Sometimes I sing very honestly, really as moving as possible.

I read Russian literature a lot.

Meditation on the majestic energyof the universe should increase our love for humanity, should widen, not narrow, our hearts.

There are 16 year olds competing at the olympics and i still push on pull doors & struggle getting through the whole day without a nap.

Why is it that for everything you gain in life, something is always lost?