Gabriel García Marquez was a literary giant known around the world, but in his early days he was a journalist.

The University of Texas' Journalism in the Americas blog has this interesting take on the author's regard for journalism:

 Garcia Marquez began law school in the 1950s but dropped out to become a journalist. He lived humbly in the Colombian cities of Cartagena and Barranquilla working as a reporter in local newspapers.

"It was a bohemian life: finish at the paper at one in the morning, then write a poem or a short story until about three, then go out to play skittles or have a beer," he said in a 1996 interview with The UNESCO Courier.

He didn't stop producing journalism even after he had earned literary fame, the BBC said.

In a 1996 speech read before the 52nd General Assembly of the Inter American Press Association (IAPA), García Márquez called journalism "the best job in the world":

Journalism is an insatiable passion that can only be digested and humanized by its brutal confrontation with reality. No one who hasn't suffered it can imagine that servitude that feeds on the unexpected occurrences in life. No one who hasn't lived it can even conceive the supernatural heartbeat produced by news, the orgasm of having an exclusive, the moral demolition of failure. No one who wasn't born for this and is willing to live only for this could persist on an occupation that is so incomprehensible and voracious, with an ouvre that is over after every news item, as if it were going to last forever, but that doesn't allow for a moment of peace while it starts all over again, with more ardor than ever in the next minute.

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