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Camilo José Cela
(11 May 1916 - 17 Jan 2002)
Spanish writer who won the 1989 Nobel Prize for Literature, for “for a rich and intensive prose, which with restrained compassion forms a challenging vision of man’s vulnerability”. His initial study of medicine was interrupted by service in the Spanish Civil War, in which he was seriously injured. He returned to his studies in Madrid, but switched to being a law student. After his first novel debut (1942), he began his full-time writing career.
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Science Quotes by Camilo José Cela (3 quotes)

Artistic impression of Cela in his 40s
originated by A.I. software
originated by A.I. software
I think each individual is never a plane but a polyhedron. Naturally, whenever a ray of light falls on a face, a vertex, an edge of this polyhedron; the arc that it reflects is undoubtedly variable, very complex and single or multicoloured. I don’t believe in plane men, I think we’re all multiple. We don’t have a double life, we have a multiple life. However, it is no less true that we’re thought to have a common denominator. I think I am or I aspire to be an honest man that tries not to bother too many people in this valley of tears.
— Camilo José Cela
From Cela Foundation biography webpage.
Things are always best seen when they are a trifle mixed up, a trifle disordered; the chilly administrative neatness of museums and filing cases, of statistics and cemeteries, is an inhuman and antinatural kind of order; it is, in a word, disorder. True order belongs to Nature, which never yet has produced two identical trees or mountains or horses.
— Camilo José Cela
In Journey to the Alcarria: Travels Through the Spanish Countryside (1948, 1990), 131.
When debts are not paid because they cannot be paid, the best thing to do is not to talk about them, and shuffle the cards again.
— Camilo José Cela
In Journey to the Alcarria: Travels Through the Spanish Countryside (1948, 1990), 5.
See also:
- The Family of Pascual Duarte, by Camilo José Cela. - book suggestion.