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A Process Of Aging Had Taken Place In Him That Was So Rapid And Critical That Soon He Was Being Treated As One Of Those Useless Great-grandfathers Who Wander About The Bedroom Like Shades, Dragging Their Feet, Remembering Better Times Aloud, And Whom No One Bother About Or Remembers Really Until The Morning They Find Them Dead In Their Bed.

-Gabriel Garcia Marquez

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A Process Of Aging

Gabriel Garcia Marquez

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A Process Of Aging Had Taken Place In Him That Was So Rapid And Critical That Soon He Was Being Treated As One Of Those Useless Great-grandfathers Who Wander About The Bedroom Like Shades, Dragging Their Feet, Remembering Better Times Aloud, And Whom No One Bother About Or Remembers Really Until The Morning They Find Them Dead In Their Bed.

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The Weak Would Never Enter The Kingdom Of Love.

I Would Not Have Traded The Delights Of My Suffering For Anything In The World.

His Examination Revealed That He Had No Fever, No Pain Anywhere, And That His Only Concrete Feeling Was An Urgent Desire To Die. All That Was Needed Was Shrewd Questioning...to Conclude Once Again That The Symptoms Of Love Were The Same As Those Of Cholera.

The War Is In The Mountains,” He Said. “for As Long As I Can Remember, They Have Killed Us In The Cities With Decrees, Not With Bullets.

He Recognized Her Despite The Uproar, Through His Tears Of Unrepeatable Sorrow At Dying Without Her, And He Looked At Her For The Last And Final Time With Eyes More Luminous, More Grief-stricken, More Grateful Than She Had Ever Seen Them In Half A Century Of A Shared Life, And He Managed To Say To Her With His Last Breath: “only God Knows How Much I Loved You

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Procrastination

Old People, With Other Old People, Are Not So Old.

The More Transparent The Writing, The More Visible The Poetry.

This Soup Tastes Like Windows

And The Two Of Them Loved Each Other For A Long Time In Silence Without Making Love Again.

Then The Writing Became So Fluid That I Sometimes Felt As If I Were Writing For The Sheer Pleasure Of Telling A Story, Which May Be The Human Condition That Most Resembles Levitation.

The Rain Would Not Have Bothered Fernanda, After All, Her Whole Life Had Been Spent As If It Were Raining.

Nobody Teaches Life Anything.

To Him She Seemed So Beautiful, So Seductive, So Different From Ordinary People, That He Could Not Understand Why No One Was As Disturbed As He By The Clicking Of Her Heels On The Paving Stones, Why No One Else's Heart Was Wild With The Breeze Stirred By The Sighs Of Her Veils, Why Everyone Did Not Go Mad With The Movements Of Her Braid, The Flight Of Her Hands, The Gold Of Her Laughter. He Had Not Missed A Single One Of Her Gestures, Not One Of The Indications Of Her Character, But He Did Not Dare Approach Her For Fear Of Destroying The Spell.

The Heart's Memory Eliminates The Bad And Magnifies The Good.

In The Beginning, When The World Was New And Nothing Had A Name, My Father Took Me To See The Ice.

I Was Asked The Other Day If I Would Be Interested In The Nobel Prize, But I Think That For Me It Would Be An Absolute Catastrophe. I Would Certainly Be Interested In Deserving It, But To Receive It Would Be Terrible. It Would Just Complicate Even More The Problems Of Fame. The Only Thing I Really Regret In Life Is Not Having A Daughter.

An Early-rising Man Is A Good Spouse But A Bad Husband.

Become A Better Person And Be Sure To Know Who You Are, Before Meeting Someone New And Hoping That Person Knows Who You Are

Meeting Someone

Nevertheless, No Matter How Much They Killed Themselves With Work, No Matter How Much Money They Eked Out, And No Matter How Many Schemes They Thought Of, Their Guardian Angels Were Asleep With Fatigue While They Put In Coins And Took Them Out Trying To Get Just Enough To Live With.

We Had Made Love Without Love, Half-dressed Most Of The Time And Always In The Dark So We Could Imagine Ourselves As Better Than We Were.

Your First Realization When You Become An Important Person Is That All Day And All Night, Whatever The Circumstances, People Want To Hear You Talk About Yourself.

Amputees Suffer Pains, Cramps, Itches In The Leg That Is No Longer There. That Is How She Felt Without Him, Feeling His Presence Where He No Longer Was.

But He Could Not Renounce His Infinite Capacity For Illusion At The Very Moment He Needed It Most... He Saw Fireflies Where There Were None.

She Felt The Abyss Of Disenchantment.

Opened The Door A Crack Wide Enough For The Entire World To Pass Through .

I Must Try And Break Through The Cliches About Latin America. Superpowers And Other Outsiders Have Fought Over Us For Centuries In Ways That Have Nothing To Do With Our Problems. In Reality We Are All Alone.

What Does He Say?' He Asked. 'he’s Very Sad,’ Úrsula Answered, ‘because He Thinks That You’re Going To Die.' 'tell Him,' The Colonel Said, Smiling, 'that A Person Doesn’t Die When He Should But When He Can.

Just As Real Events Are Forgotten, Some That Never Were Can Be In Our Memories As If They Happened.

The People Of The United States Are One Of The People I Most Admire In The World. The Only Thing I Don't Understand Is Why A Country That Manages To Do So Well Cannot Do Better In Choosing Its President.

A Famous Writer Who Wants To Continue Writing Has To Be Constantly Defending Himself Against Fame.

Many Years Later, In Front Of The Firing Squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía Would Remember That Distant Afternoon His Father Took Him To See Ice.

In Journalism Just One Fact That Is False Prejudices The Entire Work. In Contrast, In Fiction One Single Fact That Is True Gives Legitimacy To The Entire Work. That's The Only Difference, And It Lies In The Commitment Of The Writer. A Novelist Can Do Anything He Wants So Long As He Makes People Believe In It.

Thinking That It Would Console Him, She Took A Piece Of Charcoal And Erased The Innumerable Loves That He Still Owed Her For, And She Voluntarily Brought Up Her Own Most Solitary Sadnesses So As Not To Leave Him Alone In His Weeping.

It Is Life, More Than Death, That Has No Limits.

Tell Him,' The Colonel Said, Smiling, 'that A Person Doesn’t Die When He Should But When He Can.

One Hundred Years Of Solitude

The Truth Is I'm Getting Old, I Said. We Already Are Old, She Said With A Sigh. What Happens Is That You Don't Feel It On The Inside, But From The Outside Everybody Can See It.

He Repeated Until His Dying Day That There Was No One With More Common Sense, No Stonecutter More Obstinate, No Manager More Lucid Or Dangerous, Than A Poet.

The Bells Of Glory That Announced To The World The Good News That The Uncountable Time Of Eternity Had Come To An End

It Was, At Last, Real Life, With My Heart Safe And Condemned To Die Of Happy Love In The Joyful Agony Of Any Day After My Hundredth Birthday.

He Sank Into The Rocking Chair, The Same One In Which Rebecca Had Sat During The Early Days Of The House To Give Embroidery Lessons, And In Which Amaranta Had Played Chinese Checkers With Colonel Gerineldo Marquez, And In Which Amarana Ursula Had Sewn The Tiny Clothing For The Child, And In That Flash Of Lucidity He Became Aware That He Was Unable To Bear In His Soul The Crushing Weight Of So Much Past.

Freedom Is Often The First Casualty Of War.

Santiago Nasar Had Often Told Me That The Smell Of Closed-in Flowers Had An Immediate Relation To Death For Him.

They Looked Like Two Children," She Told Me. And That Thought Frightened Her, Because She'd Always Felt That Only Children Are Capable Of Everything.

Fiction Was Invented The Day Jonas Arrived Home And Told His Wife That He Was Three Days Late Because He Had Been Swallowed By A Whale.

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With Her Florentino Ariza Learned What He Had Already Experienced Many Times Without Realizing It: That One Can Be In Love With Several People At The Same Time, Feel The Same Sorrow With Each, And Not Betray Any Of Them. Alone In The Midst Of The Crowd On The Pier, He Said To Himself In A Flash Of Anger: 'my Heart Has More Rooms Than A Whorehouse.

Why Do You Insist On Talking About What Does Not Exist?

For They Had Lived Together Long Enough To Know That Love Was Always Love, Anytime And Anyplace, But It Was More Solid The Closer It Came To Death.

She Searched The Truth With An Anguish Almost As Great As Her Terrible Fear Of Finding It .

He Soon Acquired The Forlorn Look That One Sees In Vegetarians.

One Hundred Years Of Solitude

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It Was The Time When They Loved Each Other Best, Without Hurry Or Excess, When Both Were Most Conscious Of And Grateful For Their Incredible Victories Over Adversity.

Between The Covers Of The Books That No One Had Ever Read Again, In The Old Parchments Damaged By Dampness, A Livid Flower Had Prospered, And In The Air That Had Been The Purest And Brightest In The House An Unbearable Smell Of Rotten Memories Floated.

The Truth Was That I Could Not Manage My Soul, And I Was Becoming Aware Of Old Age Because Of My Weakness In The Face Of Love.

No Matter What, Nobody Can Take Away The Dances You've Already Had.

One Hundred Years Of Solitude

"things Have A Life Of Their Own," The Gypsy Proclaimed With A Harsh Accent. "it's Simply A Matter Of Waking Up Their Souls."

The World Was Reduced To The Surface Of Her Skin And Her Inner Self Was Safe From All Bitterness.

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The Only Thing He Could Do To Stay Alive Was Not To Allow Himself The Anguish Of That Memory. He Erased It From His Mind, Although From Time To Time In The Years That Were Left To Him He Would Feel It Revive, With No Warning And For No Reason, Like The Sudden Pang Of An Old Scar.

One Minute Of Reconciliation Is Worth More Than A Whole Life Of Friendship!

Forgive And Forget

One Hundred Years Of Solitude

Make No Mistake: Peaceful Madmen Are Ahead Of The Future.

In The End All Books Are Written For Your Friends. The Problem After Writing One Hundred Years Of Solitude Was That Now I No Longer Know Whom Of The Millions Of Readers I Am Writing For; This Upsets And Inhibits Me. It's Like A Million Eyes Are Looking At You And You Don't Really Know What They Think.

The Secret Of A Good Old Age Is Simply An Honorable Pact With Solitude.

Disbelief Is More Resistant Than Faith Because It Is Sustained By The Senses.

This Was When I Heard That The First Symptom Of Old Age Is When You Begin To Resemble Your Father.

He Was Still Too Young To Know That The Heart's Memory Eliminates The Bad And Magnifies The Good, And That Thanks To This Artifice We Manage To Endure The Burden Of The Past.

[the Captain] Looked At Florentino Ariza, His Invincible Power, His Intrepid Love And Was Overwhelmed By The Belated Suspicion That It Is Life, More Than Death, That Has No Limits.

Surrealism Comes From The Reality Of Latin America.

She Would Walk Through The Kitchen At Any Hour, Whenever She Was Hungry, And Put Her Fork In The Pots And Eat A Little Of Everything Without Placing Anything On A Plate, Standing In Front Of The Stove, Talking To The Serving Women, Who Were The Only Ones With Whom She Felt Comfortable, The Ones She Got Along With Best.

If You're Going To Be A Writer You Have To Be One Of The Great Ones... After All, There Are Better Ways To Starve To Death.

Her Nakedness Was Not Absolute, For Like Manet's _olympia__, Behind Her Ear She Had A Poisonous Flower With Orange Petals, And She Also Wore A Gold Bangle On Her Right Wrist And A Necklace Of Tiny Pearls. I Imagined I Would Never See Anything More Exciting For As Long As I Lived, And Today I Can Confirm That I Was Right.

In That Macondo Forgotten Even By The Birds, Where The Dust And The Heat Had Become So Strong That It Was Difficult To Breathe, Secluded By Solitude And Love And By The Solitude Of Love In A House Where It Was Almost Impossible To Sleep Because Of The Noise Of The Red Ants, Aureliano, And Amaranta Úrsula Were The Only Happy Beings, And The Most Happy On The Face Of The Earth.

Do Not Allow Me To Forget You

...and The Cries Of The Birds And The Uproar Of The Monkeys Became More And More Remote, And The World Became Eternally Sad. The Men On The Expedition Felt Overwhelmed By Their Most Ancient Memories In That Paradise Of Dampness And Silence, Going Back To Before Original Sin, As Their Boots Sank Into Pools Of Steaming Oil And Their Machetes Destroyed Bloody Lilies And Golden Salamanders.

But He Only Found Her In The Image That Saturated His Private And Terrible Solitude.

I Have Waited For This Opportunity For More Than Half A Century, To Repeat To You Once Again My Vow Of Eternal Fidelity And Everlasting Love.

Let Me Stay Here," He Said. "there Was Soap.

It Is Impossible To Explain. But What I Like Most Is To Eat.

That's Maybe The Reason He Does So Many Things So That He Will Not Have To Think .

The People One Loves Should Take All Their Things With Them When They Die.

I Don't Believe In God, But I'm Afraid Of Him.

She Had The Revelation One Sunday That While The Other Instruments Played For Everyone The Violen Played For Her Alone .

She Wanted To Be Herself Again, To Recover All That She Had Been Obliged To Give Up In Half A Century Of Servitude That Had Doubtless Made Her Happy But Which, Once Her Husband Was Dead, Did Not Leave Her Even The Vestiges Of Her Identity.

In All The Houses Keys To Memorizing Objects And Feelings Had Been Written. But The System Demanded So Much Vigilance And Moral Strength That Many Succumbed To The Spell Of An Imaginary Reality, One Invented By Themselves, Which Was Less Practical For Them But More Comforting.

He Spent Six Hours Examining Things, Trying To Find A Difference From Their Appearance On The Previous Day In The Hope Of Discovering In Them Some Change That Would Reveal The Passage Of Time.

A Falcon Who Chases A Warlike Crane Can Only Hope For A Life Of Pain.

Taught Him The Only Thing He Had To Learn About Love: That Nobody Teaches Life Anything.

The First Of The Line Is Tied To A Tree And The Last Is Being Eaten By The Ants .

Only God Knows How Much I Love You.

Don't Open That Door," She Said. "the Hallway Is Full Of Difficult Dreams." And I Asked Her: "how Do You Know?" And She Told Me: "because I Was There A Moment Ago And I Had To Come Back When I Discovered I Was Sleeping On My Heart.

One Of The Most Difficult Things Is The First Paragraph. I Have Spent Many Months On A First Paragraph, And Once I Get It, The Rest Just Comes Out Very Easily.

Although Some Men Who Were Easy With Their Words Said That It Was Worth Sacrificing One’s Life For A Night Of Love With Such An Arousing Woman, The Truth Was That No One Made Any Effort To Do So. Perhaps, Not Only To Attain Her But Also To Conjure Away Her Dangers, All That Was Needed Was A Feeling As Primitive And As Simple As That Of Love, But That Was The Only Thing That Did Not Occur To Anyone.

It Was Inevitable: The Scent Of Bitter Almonds Always Reminded Him Of The Fate Of Unrequited Love.

Unrequited Love

It Was As If They Had Leapt Over The Arduous Cavalry Of Conjugal Life And Gone Straight To The Heart Of Love. They Were Together In Silence Like An Old Married Couple Wary Of Life, Beyond The Pitfalls Of Passion, Beyond The Brutal Mockery Of Hope And The Phantoms Of Disillusion: Beyond Love. For They Had Lived Together Long Enough To Know That Love Was Always Love, Anytime And Anyplace, But It Was More Solid The Closer It Came To Death.

Because He Had Not Done What She, With Her Heart In Her Mouth, Had Hoped He Would Do, Which Was To Be A Man: Deny Everything, And Swear On His Life It Was Not True, And Grow Indignant At The False Accusation, And Shout Curses At This Ill-begotten Society That Did Not Hesitate To Trample On One's Honor, And Remain Imperturbable Even When Forced With Crushing Proofs Of His Disloyalty.

Tell Him Yes. Even If You Are Dying Of Fear, Even If You Are Sorry Later, Because Whatever You Do, You Will Be Sorry All The Rest Of Your Life If You Say No.

Rest Of Your Life

There Was No Sleeper More Elegant Than She, With Her Curved Body Posed For A Dance And Her Hand Across Her Forehead, But There Was Also No One More Ferocious When Anyone Disturbed The Sensuality Of Her Thinking She Was Still Asleep When She No Longer Was.

A Short Time Later, When The Carpenter Was Taking Measurements For The Coffin, Through The Window They Saw A Light Rain Of Tiny Yellow Flowers Falling. They Fell On The Town All Through The Night In A Silent Storm, And They Covered The Roofs And Blocked The Doors And Smothered The Animals Who Slept Outdoors. So Many Flowers Fell From The Sky That In The Morning The Streets Were Carpeted With A Compact Cushion And They Had To Clear Them Away With Shovels And Rakes So That The Funeral Procession Could Pass By.

Life Is But A Continual Succession Of Opportunities For Surviving.

A Lie Is More Comfortable Than Doubt, More Useful Than Love, More Lasting Than Truth.

One Hundred Years Of Solitude

She Always Had A Headache, Or It Was Too Hot, Always, Or She Pretended To Be Asleep, Or She Had Her Period Again, Her Period, Always Her Period. So Much So That Dr. Urbino Had Dared To Say In Class, Only For The Relief Of Unburdening Himself Without Confession, That After Ten Years Of Marriage Women Had Their Periods As Often As Threes Times A Week.

He Was Healthier Than The Rest Of Us, But When You Listened With The Stethoscope You Could Hear The Tears Bubbling Inside His Heart.

Horses Frighten Me As Much As Chickens Do,’ He Said. ‘that Is Too Bad, Because Lack Of Communication With Horses Has Impeded Human Progress,’ Said Abrenuncio. ‘if We Ever Broke Down The Barriers, We Could Produce The Centaur.

More Than Mother And Son, They Were Accomplices In Solitude.

A Great Commotion Immobilized Her In Her Center Of Gravity, Planted Her In Her Place, And Her Defensive Will Was Demolished By The Irresistible Anxiety To Discover What The Orange Bells And Whistles And The Invisible Globes On The Other Side Of Death Were Like.

She Was Lost In Her Longing To Understand.

A True Friend Is The One Who Holds Your Hand And Touches Your Heart.

The Anxiety Of Falling In Love Could Not Find Repose Except In Bed.

Falling In Love

I Think That The Idea That I'm Writing For Many More People Than I Ever Imagined Has Created A Certain General Responsibility That Is Literary And Political. There's Even Pride Involved, In Not Wanting To Fall Short Of What I Did Before.

Humanity, Like Armies In The Field, Advances At The Speed Of The Slowest.

She Knew That It Would Not Be Easy To Submit To His Miserliness, Or The Foolishness Of His Premature Appearance Of Age, Or His Maniacal Sense Of Order, Or His Eagerness To As For Everything And Give Nothing At All In Return, But Despite All This, No Man Was Better Company Because No Other Man In The World Was So In Need Of Love.

One Can Be In Love With Several People At The Same Time, Feel The Sorrow With Each, And Not Betray Any Of Them.

He Thought About His People Without Sentimentality, With A Strict Closing Of His Accounts With Life, Beginning To Understand How Much He Really Loved The People He Hated Most.

One Could Be Happy Not Only Without Love, But Despite It.

In The Plenitude Of Their Relationship, Florentina Ariza Asked Himself Which Of The Two Was Love: The Turbulent Bed Or The Peaceful Sunday Afternoons, And Sara Noriega Calmed Him With The Simple Argument That Love Was Everything They Did Naked. She Said, 'spiritual Love From The Waist Up And Physical Love From The Waist Down.

I Have Never Done Anything Except Write, But I Don't Possess The Vocation Or Talents Of A Narrator, Have No Knowledge At All Of The Laws Of Dramatic Composition, And If I Have Embarked Upon This Enterprise It Is Because I Trust In The Light Shed By How Much I Have Read In My Life.

It Was Also Her Nature That Caused Her Letters To Avoid Emotional Pitfalls And Confine Themselves To Relating The Events Of Her Daily Life In The Utilitarian Style Of A Ship's Log. In Reality They Were Distracted Letters, Intended To Keep The Coals Alive Without Putting Her Hand In The Fire, While Florentino Ariza Burned Himself Alive In Every Line.

The Adolescents Of My Generation, Greedy For Life, Forgot In Body And Soul About Their Hopes For The Future Until Reality Taught Them That Tomorrow Was Not What They Had Dreamed, And They Discovered Nostalgia.

I Do Not Believe There Is A Method Better Than Montessori For Making Children Sensitive To The Beauties Of The World And Awakening Their Curiosity Regarding The Secrets Of Life.

How Will I Ever Get Out Of This Labyrinth!

Why Were You So Old When We Met? I Answered With The Truth: Age Isn't How Old You Are But How Old You Feel.

Jose Palacios, His Oldest Servant, Found Him Floating Naked With His Eyes Open In The Purifying Waters Of His Bath And Thought He Had Drowned.

From The Moment I Wrote 'leaf Storm' I Realized I Wanted To Be A Writer And That Nobody Could Stop Me And That The Only Thing Left For Me To Do Was To Try To Be The Best Writer In The World.

He Governed As If He Felt Predestined To Never Die

There Had Never Been A Death So Foretold.

As A Writer I'm Merely A Journalist Who Has Learned To Write Better Than Others.

Never Stop Smiling Not Even When You're Sad, Someone Might Fall In Love With Your Smile.

Falling In Love

The Children Would Remember For The Rest Of Their Lives The August Solemnity With Which Their Father, Devastated By His Prolonged Vigil And By The Wraith Of His Imagination, Revealed His Discovery To Them: 'the World Is Round, Like An Orange.

We'll Grow Old Waiting.

Then He Knew That They Had Rounded The Cape Of Good Hope, And He Took Her Large, Soft Hand Again And Covered It With Forlorn Little Kisses, First The Hard Metacarpus, The Long, Discerning Fingers, The Diaphanous Nails, And Then The Hieroglyphics Of Her Destiny On Her Perspiring Palm.

In The End All Books Are Written For Your Friends.

One Hundred Years Of Solitude

An Ash-gray Dog With A White Blaze On Its Forehead Burst Onto The Rough Terrain Of The Market On The First Sunday In December, Knocked Down Tables Of Fried Food, Overturned Indians' Stalls And Lottery Kiosks, And Bit Four People Who Happened To Cross Its Path.

A Process Of Aging Had Taken Place In Him That Was So Rapid And Critical That Soon He Was Being Treated As One Of Those Useless Great-grandfathers Who Wander About The Bedroom Like Shades, Dragging Their Feet, Remembering Better Times Aloud, And Whom No One Bother About Or Remembers Really Until The Morning They Find Them Dead In Their Bed.

As I Kissed Her The Heat Of Her Body Increased, And It Exhaled A Wild, Untamed Fragrance.

Don't Struggle So Much, The Best Things Happen When Not Expected.

It's Much More Important To Write Than To Be Written About.

Life Is Not What One Lived, But What One Remembers And How One Remembers It In Order To Recount It

Knowledge And Power

Sex Is The Consolation You Have When You Can't Have Love.

Aureliano Not Only Understood By Then, He Also Lived His Brother’s Experiences As Something Of His Own, For On One Occasion When The Latter Was Explaining In Great Detail The Mechanism Of Love, He Interrupted Him To Ask: “what Does It Feel Like?” José Arcadio Gave An Immediate Reply: “it’s Like An Earthquake.

An Artisan Without Memories, Whose Only Dream Was To Die Of Fatigue In The Oblivion And Misery Of His Little Gold Fishes.

All Human Beings Have Three Lives: Public, Private, And Secret.

One Hundred Years Of Solitude

The Only Difference Today Between Liberals And Conservatives Is That The Liberals Go To Mass At Five O'clock And The Conservatives At Eight.

There [is] No Innocence More Dangerous Than The Innocence Of Age.

One Night A Friend Lent Me A Book Of Short Stories By Franz Kafka. I Went Back To The Pension Where I Was Staying And Began To Read The Metamorphosis. The First Line Almost Knocked Me Off The Bed. I Was So Surprised. The First Line Reads, “as Gregor Samsa Awoke That Morning From Uneasy Dreams, He Found Himself Transformed In His Bed Into A Gigantic Insect. . . .” When I Read The Line I Thought To Myself That I Didn’t Know Anyone Was Allowed To Write Things Like That. If I Had Known, I Would Have Started Writing A Long Time Ago. So I Immediately Started Writing Short Stories.

Nothing Resembles A Person As Much As The Way He Dies.

Everything That Goes Into My Mouth Seems To Make Me Fat, Everything That Comes Out Of My Mouth Embarrasses Me.

Both Described At The Same Time How It Was Always March There And Always Monday, And Then They Understood That José Arcadio Buendía Was Not As Crazy As The Family Said, But That He Was The Only One Who Had Enough Lucidity To Sense The Truth Of The Fact That Time Also Stumbled And Had Accidents And Could Therefore Splinter And Leave An Eternalized Fragment In A Room.

Take Advantage Of It Now, While You Are Young, And Suffer All You Can, Because These Things Don't Last Your Whole Life.

A Man Knows When He Is Growing Old Because He Begins To Look Like His Father.

The Problem With Marriage Is That It Ends Every Night After Making Love, And It Must Be Rebuilt Every Morning Before Breakfast.

Perhaps This Is What The Stories Meant When They Called Somebody Heartsick. Your Heart And Your Stomach And Your Whole Insides Felt Empty And Hollow And Aching.

Just Because Someone Does Not Love You As You Want, It Does Not Mean That You Do Not Love With All His Being.

The Only Everyday And Eternal Reality Was Love.

If God Hadn't Rested On Sunday, He Would Have Had Time To Finish The World.

She Felt So Old, So Worn Out, So Far Away From The Best Moments Of Her Life That She Even Yearned For Those That She Remembered As The Worst… Her Heart Of Compressed Ash, Which Had Resisted The Most Telling Blows Of Daily Reality Without Strain, Fell Apart With The First Waves Of Nostalgia. The Need To Feel Sad Was Becoming A Vice As The Years Eroded Her. She Became Human In Her Solitude.

I Discovered The Miracle That All Things That Sound Are Music, Including The Dishes And Silverware In The Dishwasher, As Long As They Fulfill The Illusion Of Showing Us Where Life Is Heading.

Life Had Already Given Him Sufficient Reasons For Knowing That No Defeat Was The Final One.

Her Heart Of Compressed Ash, Which Had Resisted The Most Telling Blows Of Daily Reality Without Strain, Fell Apart With The First Waves Of Nostalgia.

Most Critics Don't Realize That A Novel Like One Hundred Years Of Solitude Is A Bit Of A Joke, Full Of Signals To Close Friends; And So, With Some Pre-ordained Right To Pontificate They Take On The Responsibility Of Decoding The Book And Risk Making Terrible Fools Of Themselves.

She Knew That He Loved Her Above All Else, More Than Anything In The World, But Only For His Own Sake.

Little By Little, Studying The Infinite Possibilities Of A Loss Of Memory, He Realized That The Day Might Come When Things Would Be Recognized By Their Inscriptions But That No One Would Remember Their Use.... At The Beginning Of The Road Into The Swamp They Put Up A Sign That Said "macondo" And Another Larger One On The Main Street That Said "god Exists".

Be Calm. God Awaits You At The Door.

I Can't Think Of Any One Film That Improved On A Good Novel, But I Can Think Of Many Good Films That Came From Very Bad Novels.

I Would Give Wings To Children, But I Would Leave It To Them To Learn How To Fly By Themselves.

Once Again She Shuddered With The Evidence That Time Was Not Passing, As She Had Just Admitted, But That It Was Turning In A Circle.

Lost In The Solitude Of His Immense Power, He Began To Lose Direction.

I Think Just The Opposite Is True: Love Is An Ideology For Eternal Militants, And The More Misfortunes Life Tries To Burden Us With, The More Essential Love Becomes.

Everyone Has Three Lives: A Public Life, A Private Life, And A Secret Life.

Hate And Love Are Reciprocal Passions.

He Was Carrying A Suitcase With Clothing In Order To Stay And Another Just Like It With Almost Two Thousand Letters That She Had Written Him. They Were Arranged By Date In Bundles Ties With Colored Ribbons, And They Were All Unopened.

Her Laugh Was Sad And Taciturn, Seemingly Detached From Any Feeling Of The Moment, Like Something She Kept In The Cupboard And Took Out Only When She Had To, Using It With No Feeling Of Ownership, As If The Infrequency Of Her Smiles Had Made Her Forget The Normal Way To Use Them.

Florentina Ariza Had Kept His Answer Ready For Fifty-three Years, Seven Months And Eleven Days And Nights. 'forever,' He Said.

And Both Of Them Remained Floating In An Empty Universe Where The Only Everyday & Eternal Reality Was Love.

Both Looked Back Then On The Wild Revelry...and They Lamented That It Had Cost Them So Much Of Their Lives To Find The Paradise Of Shared Solitude.

It Was Then That She Realized That The Yellow Butterflies Preceded The Appearances Of Mauricio Babilonia.

Ah, Me, If This Is Love, Then How It Torments.

I Ask Myself How I Could Give In To This Perpetual Vertigo That I In Fact Provoked And Feared. I Floated Among Erratic Clouds And Talked To Myself In Front Of The Mirror In The Vain Hope Of Confirming Who I Was. My Delirium Was So Great That During A Student Demonstration Complete With Rocks And Bottles, I Had To Make An Enormous Effort Not To Lead It As I Held Up A Sign That Would Sanctify My Truth: I Am Mad With Love.

A Man Should Have Two Wives: One To Love And One To Sew On His Buttons.

She Would Say, "someone Should Invent Something To Do With Things You Cannot Use Anymore But That You Still Cannot Throw Out.

The Woman Let Out An Expansive Laugh That Resounded Through The House Like A Spray Of Broken Glass.

The Only Thing Worse Than Bad Health Is A Bad Name.

Seeing Him Like This, Dressed Just For Her In So Patent A Manner, She Could Not Hold Back The Fiery Blush That Rose To Her Face. She Was Embarrassed When She Greeted Him, And He Was More Embarrassed By Her Embarrassment. The Knowledge That They Were Behaving As If They Were Sweethearts Was Even More Embarrassing, And The Knowledge That They Were Both Embarrassed Embarrassed Them So Much That Captain Samaritano Noticed It With A Tremor Of Compassion.

And It Was Always Without Pretensions Of Loving Or Being Loved Although Always In The Hope Of Finding Something That Resembled Love But Without The Problems Of Love.

Age Isn't How Old You Are But How Old You Feel.

Today, When I Saw You, I Realized That What Is Between Us Is Nothing More Than An Illusion.

Caribbean Reality Resembles The Wildest Imagination.

No Medicine Cures What Happiness Cannot.

Fame Invades Your Private Life. It Takes Away From The Time That You Spend With Friends, And The Time That You Can Work. It Tends To Isolate You From The Real World.

I Don't Have A Method. All I Do Is Read A Lot, Think A Lot, And Rewrite Constantly. It's Not A Scientific Thing.

Inspiration Gives No Warnings.

She Discovered With Great Delight That One Does Not Love One's Children Just Because They Are One's Children But Because Of The Friendship Formed While Raising Them.

If Men Gave Birth, They'd Be Less Inconsiderate.

No, Not Rich. I Am A Poor Man With Money, Which Is Not The Same Thing.

Children's Lies Are Signs Of Great Talent.

The Interpretation Of Our Reality Through Patterns Not Our Own, Serves Only To Make Us Ever More Unknown, Ever Less Free, Ever More Solitary.

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Vladimir Mayakovsky

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