What is the theme in Collected Stories by Gabriel Garcia Marquez?

The single unifying theme of this collection of short stories is Garcia Marquez' awareness that human perception is human reality. As the reader is taken, or forced, through time as it advances, retreats, stands still, and overlaps with other times, it becomes clear that time itself is not constant but a subjective feature of the mind and as much an identifying character trait as temperament or judgment. Characters in this Faulknerian world do not so much interact as intersect, and try to communicate from their different perceptions of reality.