Quotes from Alejo Carpentier

Decididamente -pensaba- no he nacido para ser lo que hoy se entiende por un buen ciudadano…

descubriera esta isla poblada de seres felices, sencillos, entregados a la vida sana que constituye el estado natural del ser humano, dándole el nombre de la nave en que viajaba.

He knew that he was hated, abhorred by the mass of the people, and this knowledge made him react against the external world, and at the same time increased the satisfaction and pleasure he found in the servility, solicitude, and adulation of his dependents, who had consolidated his interests and prosperity and extended to the utmost a sovereignty quite unsupported by legality and constitution.

Those who have always had faith in its final success can do no less than rejoice as if it was our own triumph after five years of daily struggle to impose Cuban music on the European continent.

I gladly accepted the commission but was uncertain about what the end result would be. On the one hand, Cuban music was conquering the world; being heard everywhere, and our small island was already producing one of the popular musical genres of the 20th century.

The concept of the marvelous begins to take form when it arises from an unexpected alteration of reality, the miracle.

A day will come when man will discover an alphabet in the eyes of the chalcedonies, in the marking of the moth, and will learn in astonishment that every spotted snail has always been a poem.

I studied harmony and composition in a very spontaneous manner.