Rodrigo García > Quotes

“I wish I knew how my parents remembered their younger selves, or that I had even an inkling of what they thought of their place in the world, back when their lives were confined
by the small towns of their Colombian childhoods. I would give anything to spend an hour with my father when he was a rascal of nine, or with my mother when she was a spirited girl of eleven, both unable to suspect the extraordinary lives that awaited them. And so, in the back of my mind is the preoccupation that perhaps I didn't know them well enough, and certainly regret that I didn't ask them more about the fine print of their lives, their most private thoughts, their greatest hopes and fears. It's possible that they felt the same about us, for who can fully know their own children?”
― Rodrigo García

“Au commencement était le rire puis, après le rire, vint le verbe, pour enquêter sur le rire

Mais le verbe ne sût pas comment déchiffrer le rire et, à force de parler, le verbe déssècha les rires
Il les débarrassa de leur esprit, du spasme

Personne ne lâche un éclat de rire, de peur d'être défiguré”
― Rodrigo Garcia, GOLGOTA PICNIC

“The death of the second parent is like looking through a telescope one night and no longer finding a planet that has always been there. It has vanished, with its religion, its customs, its own peculiar habits and rituals, big and small. The echo remains. I think of my father every morning when I dry my back with a towel the way he taught me after seeing me struggling with it at the age of six. Much of his advice is always with me. (A favorite: be forgiving of your friends, so that they may be forgiving of you.) I remember my mother each time I walk a guest to the front door when they're leaving, because not to do so would be inexcusable, and whenever I pour olive oil on anything. And in recent years, the three of us look back at me from my face in the mirror.”
― Rodrigo García

“Actions over words always, otherwise silence.”
― Rodrigo García

“Sin lugar a dudas, su personalidad compleja ha contribuido a mi fascinación de toda la vida por las mujeres, en particular las multifacéticas, las enigmáticas, y por aquellas a las que llaman, creo que de manera injusta, mujeres difíciles.”
― Rodrigo García, Gabo y Mercedes: Una despedida

“The surroundings fade away and each and every person has their own singular encounter, not just with the deceased but also with the event itself, as if death were a communal property. Nobody can be denied their relationship to it, their membership in that society. And death as something that is, rather than as the lack of something, is sobering to behold.”
― Rodrigo García, A Farewell to Gabo and Mercedes: A Son’s Memoir of Gabriel García Márquez and Mercedes Barcha – A Tender and Intimate Portrait of The Nobel Prize Winner's Final Days

“Je ne vous dis pas: sautez par la fenêtre. Je vous dis: sautez à l'intérieur de vous-mêmes, jouissez de la chute, ne laissez personne vous déranger.
La solitude est tout ce dont vous êtes assurés.”
― Rodrigo Garcia, GOLGOTA PICNIC