Background Image

...

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.

-Gabriel Garcia Marquez

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

Don't Open That Door,"

Gabriel Garcia Marquez

...

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.

Views: 6

Topic

More From Gabriel Garcia Marquez

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.

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

There Is Always Something Left To Love.

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

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

It Had To Teach Her To Think Of Love As A State Of Grace: Not The Means To Anything But The Alpha And Omega, An End It Itself.

She Would Defend Herself, Saying That Love, No Matter What Else It Might Be, Was A Natural Talent. She Would Say: You Are Either Born Knowing How, Or You Never Know.

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

One Hundred Years Of Solitude

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Just Imagine, A Cow On The Balcony Of The Nation, What An Awful Thing, What A Shitty Country.

Over The Years They Both Reached The Same Wise Conclusion By Different Paths: It Was Not Possible To Live Together In Any Other Way, Or Love In Any Other Way, And Nothing In This World Was More Difficult Than Love.

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.

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

The Fact Is That Being Seductive Is An Addiction That Can Never Be Satisfied.

Always Tell What You Feel. Do What You Think.

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

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

No Medicine Cures What Happiness Cannot.

You Can't Eat Hope,' The Woman Said. You Can't Eat It, But It Sustains You,' The Colonel Replied.

It Always Amuses Me That The Biggest Praise For My Work Comes For The Imagination, While The Truth Is That There's Not A Single Line In All My Work That Does Not Have A Basis In Reality. The Problem Is That Caribbean Reality Resembles The Wildest Imagination.

Nobody Teaches Life Anything.

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.

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.

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".

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

The Only Regret I Will Have In Dying Is If It Is Not For Love.

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.

Fernanda, On The Other Hand, Looked For It In Vain Along The Paths Of Her Everyday Itinerary Without Knowing That The Search For Lost Things Is Hindered By Routine Habits And That Is Why It Is So Difficult To Find Them.

I Always Had Understood That Dying Of Love Was Mere Poetic License.

When I Sit Down To Write, Which Is The Essential Moment In My Life, I Am Completely Alone. Whenever I Write A Book, I Accumulate A Lot Of Documentation. That Background Material Is The Most Intimate Part Of My Private Life. It's A Little Embarrassing - Like Being Seen In Your Underwear It's Like The Way Magicians Never Tell Others How They Make A Dove Come Out Of A Hat.

While A Person Does Not Give Up On Sex, Sex Does Not Give Up On The Person.

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.

Always Remember That The Most Important Thing In A Good Marriage Is Not Happiness, But Stability.

This Was When She Asked Him Whether It Was True That Love Conquered All, As The Songs Said. 'it Is True', He Replied, 'but You Would Do Well Not To Believe It.

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

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.

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

Crazy People Are Not Crazy If One Accepts Their Reasoning.

One Hundred Years Of Solitude

Necessity Has The Face Of A Dog.

When One Reaches Absolute Power, One Loses Total Contact With Reality.

He Thought That The World Would Make More Rapid Progress Without The Burden Of Old People.

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

She Likes To Try Everything, Out Of Curiosity, But She'll Be Sorry If She Isn't Guided By Her Heart.

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.

To All, I Would Say How Mistaken They Are When They Think That They Stop Falling In Love When They Grow Old, Without Knowing That They Grow Old When They Stop Falling In Love...

Falling In Love

...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.

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

I Must Warn You That The Books I Like Are Not Necessarily The Ones I Think Are The Best. I Like Them For Various Reasons Not Always Easy To Explain.

The Problem In Public Life Is Learning To Overcome Terror; The Problem In Married Life Is Learning To Overcome Boredom.

People Spend A Lifetime Thinking Abouthow They Would Really Like To Live. I Asked My Friends And No One Seems To Know Very Clearly. To Me, It's Very Clear Now. I Wish My Life Could Have Been Like The Years When I Was Writing 'love In The Time Of Cholera.'

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.

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.

Tricks You Need To Transform Something Which Appears Fantastic, Unbelievable Into Something Plausible, Credible, Those I Learned From Journalism. The Key Is To Tell It Straight. It Is Done By Reporters And By Country Folk.

What Is Essential, Therefore, Is Not That You No Longer Believe, But That God Continues To Believe In You.

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

Falling In Love

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.

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

Unrequited Love

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

Forgive And Forget

One Hundred Years Of Solitude

...they Enjoyed The Miracle Of Loving Each Other As Much At The Table As In Bed, And They Grew To Be So Happy That Even When They Were Two Worn-out Old People They Kept On Blooming Like Children And Playing Together Like Dogs.

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.

This Was His World, He Said To Himself, The Sad, Oppressive World That God Had Provided For Him, And He Was Responsible To It.

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

But That Afternoon He Asked Himself, With His Infinite Capacity For Illusion, If Such Pitiless Indifference Might Not Be A Subterfuge For Hiding The Torments Of Love.

Unrequited Love

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.

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.

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.

Shame Has Poor Memory.

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

Even When The Winds Of Misfortune Blow, Amazing Things Can Still Happen.

For A Week, Almost Without Speaking, They Went Ahead Like Sleepwalkers Through A Universe Of Grief, Lighted Only By The Tenuous Reflection Of Luminous Insects, And Their Lungs Were Overwhelmed By A Suffocating Smell Of Blood.

She Sensed It, Saw My Eyes Wet With Tears, And Only Then Must Have Discovered I Was No Longer The Man I Had Been, And I Endured Her Glance With A Courage I Never Thought I Had.

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.

Nobody Is Worth Crying For, And Those That Are Worth It Will Not Make You Cry.

The Only Everyday And Eternal Reality Was Love.

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

One Hundred Years Of Solitude

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

Surrealism Comes From The Reality Of Latin America.

I Never Had Intimate Friends, And The Few Who Came Close Are In New York. By Which I Mean They're Dead, Because That's Where I Suppose Condemned Souls Go In Order Not To Endure The Truth Of Their Past Lives.

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.

Wherever They Might Be They Always Remember That The Past Was A Lie, That Memory Has No Return, That Every Spring Gone By Could Never Be Recovered, And That The Wildest And Most Tenacious Love Was An Ephemeral Truth In The End.

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

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.

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.

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.

One Never Quite Stops Believing, Some Doubt Remains Forever".

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.

To Oppression, Plundering And Abandonment, We Respond With Life.

What Matters In Life Is Not What Happens To You But What You Remember And How You Remember It.

Death Really Did Not Matter To Him But Life Did, And Therefore The Sensation He Felt When They Gave Their Decision Was Not A Feeling Of Fear But Of Nostalgia.

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.

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.

Ultimately, Literature Is Nothing But Carpentry.

If You Lie Down In A Village Square Hoping To Capture A Sea Gull, You Could Stay There Your Whole Life Without Succeeding. But A Hundred Miles From Shore It's Different. Sea Gulls Have A Highly Developed Instinct For Self-preservation On Land But At Sea They're Very Cocky.

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.

...the Girl Raised Her Eyes To See Who Was Passing By The Window, And That Casual Glance Was The Beginning Of A Cataclysm Of Love That Still Had Not Ended Half A Century Later.

He Pleaded So Much That He Lost His Voice. His Bones Began To Fill With Words.

Each Man Is Master Of His Own Death, And All That We Can Do When The Time Comes Is To Help Him Die Without Fear Of Pain.

It Was A Love Of Perpetual Flight.

Ultimately, Literature Is Nothing But Carpentry. With Both You Are Working With Reality, A Material Just As Hard As Wood.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

There Was A House At The Foot Of The Tower, Close To The Thunder Of The Waves Breaking Against The Cliffs, Where Love Was More Intense Because It Seemed Like A Shipwreck.

We'll Grow Old Waiting.

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.

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

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.

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.

Life In The World... Was Nothing More Than A System Of Atavistic Contracts, Banal Ceremonies, Preordained Words, With Which People Entertained Each Other In Society In Order Not To Commit Murder. The Dominant Sign In That Paradise Of Provincial Frivolity Was Fear Of The Unknown.

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.

In Her Final Years She Would Still Recall The Trip That, With The Perverse Lucidity Of Nostalgia, Became More And More Recent In Her Memory.

She Had Never Imagined That Curiosty Was One Of The Many Masks Of Love .

Nothing One Does In Bed Is Immoral If It Helps To Perpetuate Love.

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

It Is A Triumph Of Life That Old People Lose Their Memories Of Inessential Things.

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

Thus They Went On Living In A Reality That Was Slipping Away, Momentarily Captured By Words, But Which Would Escape Irremediably When They Forgot The Values Of The Written Letters.

Jealousy Knows More Than Truth Does.

Over The Weekend The Vultures Got Into The Presidential Palace By Pecking Through The Screens On The Balcony Windows And The Flapping Of Their Wings Stirred Up The Stagnant Time Inside, And At Dawn On Monday The City Awoke Out Of Its Lethargy Of Centuries With The Warm, Soft Breeze Of A Great Man Dead And Rotting Grandeur.

At Some Point, You No Longer Feel Pain. Sensation Disappears And Reason Is Dulled, Until You Lose All Grasp Of Time And Place.

Justice Limps Along, But Gets There All The Same.

Together They Had Overcome The Daily Incomprehension, The Instantaneous Hatred, The Reciprocal Nastiness, And Fabulous Flashes Of Glory In The Conjugal Conspiracy. It Was Time When They Both Loved Each Other Best, Without Hurry Or Excess, When Both Were Most Conscious Of And Grateful For Their Incredible Victories Over Adversity. Life Would Still Present Them With Other Moral Trials, Of Course, But That No Longer Mattered: They Were On The Other Shore.

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.

This Soup Tastes Like Windows

Give Me A Prejudice And I Will Move The World.

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.

Injections Are The Best Thing Ever Invented For Feeding Doctors.

It Is Not True That People Stop Pursuing Dreams Because They Grow Old, They Grow Old Because They Stop Pursuing Dreams.

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

Very Well, I Will Marry You If You Promise Not To Make Me Eat Eggplant.

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

There Had Never Been A Death So Foretold.

He Governed As If He Felt Predestined To Never Die

It Was The Year They Fell Into Devastating Love. Neither One Could Do Anything Except Think About The Other, Dream About The Other, And Wait For Letters With The Same Impatience They Felt When They Answered Them.

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

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

He Who Awaits Much Can Expect Little.

Procrastination

It Was A Lone Voice In The Middle Of The Ocean, But It Was Heard At Great Depth And Great Distance.

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.

I Plead Youth As A Mitigating Circumstance.

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

They Were So Close To Each Other That They Preferred Death To Separation.

One Hundred Years Of Solitude

There's No Greater Misfortune Than Dying Alone.

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.

The House Became Full Of Love. Aureliano Expressed It In Poetry That Had No Beginning And No End. He Would Write It On The Harsh Pieces Of Parchment That Melquiades Gave Him, On The Bathroom Walls, On The Skin Of His Arms, And In All Of It Remedios Would Appear Transfigured: Remedios In The Soporific Air Of Two In The Afternoon, Remedios In The Soft Breath Of The Roses, Remedios In The Water-clock Secrets Of The Moths, Remedios In The Steaming Morning Bread, Remedios Everywhere And Remedios Forever.

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

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

My Most Important Problem Was Destroying The Lines Of Demarcation That Separate What Seems Real From What Seems Fantastic.

He Did Not Dare To Console Her, Knowing That It Would Have Been Like Consoling A Tiger Run Thru By A Spear.

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

The Weak Would Never Enter The Kingdom Of Love.

Carmelia Montiel, A Twenty-year-old Virgin, Had Just Bathed In Orange-blossom Water And Was Strewing Rosemary Leaves On Pilar Ternera's Bed When The Shot Rang Out. Aureliano José Had Been Destined To Find With Her The Happiness That Amaranta Had Denied Him, To Have Seven Children, And To Die In Her Arms Of Old Age, But The Bullet That Entered His Back And Shattered His Chest Had Been Directed By A Wrong Interpretation Of The Cards.

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.

In The End All Books Are Written For Your Friends.

One Hundred Years Of Solitude

I’ve Remained A Virgin For You.

His Place Was Always Set At The Table, In Case He Rturned From The Dead Without Warning .

There Is No Greater Glory Than To Die For Love.

In Some Way Impossible To Ascertain, After So Many Years Of Absense, Jose Arcadio Was Still An Autumnal Child, Terribly Sad And Solitary.

And Realized That Death Was Not Only A Permanent Probability, As He Had Always Believed, But An Immediate Reality.

A Person Does Not Belong To A Place Until There Is Someone Dead Under The Ground.

One Hundred Years Of Solitude

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.

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.

He Would Wake For No Reason In The Middle Of The Night, And The Memory Of The Self-absorbed Love Was Revealed To Him For What It Was: A Pitfall Of Happiness That He Despised And Desired At The Same Time, But From Which It Was Impossible To Escape.

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

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

It Was A Meditation On Life, Love, Old Age, Death: Ideas That Had Often Fluttered Around Her Head Like Nocturnal Birds But Dissolved Into A Trickle Of Feathers When She Tried To Catch Hold Of Them.

I Discovered That My Obsession For Having Each Thing In The Right Place, Each Subject At The Right Time, Each Word In The Right Style, Was Not The Well-deserved Reward Of An Ordered Mind, But Just The Opposite: A Complete System Of Pretense Invented By Me To Hide The Disorder Of My Nature.

And Again, As Always, After So Many Years We Were Still In The Same Place We Always Were.

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.

He Really Had Been Through Death, But He Had Returned Because He Could Not Bear The Solitude.

One Hundred Years Of Solitude

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.

When I Wake Up," He Said, "remind Me That I'm Going To Marry Her.

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

You Have To Have Spent The Night At Sea, Sitting In A Life Raft And Looking At Your Watch, To Know That The Night Is Immeasurably Longer Than The Day.

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

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

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.

She Would Not Shed A Tear, She Would Not Waste The Rest Of Her Years Simmering In The Maggot Broth Of Memory.

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

Caribbean Reality Resembles The Wildest Imagination.

Before Reaching The Final Line, However, He Had Already Understood That He Would Never Leave That Room, For It Was Foreseen That The City Of Mirrors (or Mirages) Would Be Wiped Out By The Wind And Exiled From The Memory Of Men At The Precise Moment When Aureliano Babilonia Would Finish Deciphering The Parchments, And That Everything Written On Them Was Unrepeatable Since Time Immemorial And Forever More, Because Races Condemned To One Hundred Years Of Solitude Did Not Have A Second Opportunity On Earth.

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.

Trending Author

Christopher Hampton

Alan Dershowitz

Joaquin Phoenix

Chen Guangcheng

Category