Reaction to death of writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez:
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“A thousand years of loneliness and sadness for the death of the greatest Colombian of all time!” - Colombia President Juan Manuel Santos.
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“With the passing of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the world has lost one of its greatest visionary writers - and one of my favorites from the time I was young … I offer my thoughts to his family and friends, whom I hope take solace in the fact that Gabo’s work will live on for generations to come.” - U.S. President Barack Obama.
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“A great man has died, one whose works gave the literature of our language great reach and prestige,” Peruvian author Mario Vargas Llosa, who had once famously feuded with Garcia Marquez.
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“I owe him the impulse and the freedom to plunge into literature. In his books I found my own family, my country, the people I have known all my life, the color, the rhythm, and the abundance of my continent.” - Chilean writer Isabel Allende
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“The world, and in particular the nations of Our America, have suffered the physical loss of an intellectual and paradigmatic writer. Cubans (have lost) a great, close and supportive friend.” - Cuban President Raul Castro.
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“(He was) a coherent, committed, progressive person, with a sense of solidarity, and deeply Latin American.” -Nobel Peace Price Laureate Rigoberta Menchu Tum.
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“Latin America has lost one of the greatest guiding lights to its truth, its happiness and its sorrow” - Uruguay President Jose Mujica.
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“A great artist is gone, but his grand art remains with us. Most authors are only shadows, but Gabriel Garcia Marquez belonged to those who cast a shadow, and he will continue to do so long after his death.” Peter Englund, permanent secretary of the Nobel Prize-awarding Swedish Academy.
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“One would really have to go back to Dickens to find a writer of the highest literary quality who commanded such extraordinary power over whole populations.” - British novelist Ian McEwan, to the BBC.
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“On behalf of Mexico, I express my sadness for the death of one the greatest writers of our time: Gabriel Garcia Marquez.” - Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto.
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“From the time I read ’One Hundred Years of Solitude’ more than 40 years ago, I was always amazed by his unique gifts of imagination, clarity of thought, and emotional honesty … I was honored to be his friend and to know his great heart and brilliant mind for more than 20 years.” - former U.S. President Bill Clinton.
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“With Gabriel Garcia Marquez, a writing giant who gave worldwide reach to the imagination of an entire continent has passed. … His committed articles as a journalist and his tireless struggle against imperialism made him one of the most influential South American intellectuals of our time.” - French President Francois Hollande.
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“His unique characters and exuberant Latin America will remain marked in the hearts and memories of his millions of readers.” - Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff
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“He is like the Mandela of literature because of the impact that he has had on readers all over the world. His influence is universal, and that is a very rare thing.” - Cristobal Pera, editorial director of Penguin Random House in Mexico.
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“Gabo’s death is a loss for Colombia and for the entire world. His work will safeguard his memory.” - Colombia’s largest rebel group, The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, said in a tweet.
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“He had the capacity to see stories that many of us have in front of us and don’t even notice. He was unique in that.” - Nicaraguan writer Sergio Ramirez Mercado.
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“In recent times it wasn’t easy to communicate with him, although he understood and continued the conversation. He was always loving and generous and extraordinarily clever.” - Rafael Tovar y de Teresa, director of Mexico’s National Council for Culture and the Arts.
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“Gabo has left us and we will have years of solitude. But his works and his love for the motherland remain. Farewell until the victory, dear Gabo.” - Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa.
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“If you’ve read him, you know that he’s not really gone. He is in an afterlife of his own creation, his own Macondo.” - Edwidge Danticat, a Haitian-American author.
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“Cuba suffers from this death, as do all readers of a writer who is an icon.” - Miguel Barnet, Cuban author and essayist.
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