Background Image

...

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.

-Gabriel Garcia Marquez

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

I Ask Myself How

Gabriel Garcia Marquez

...

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.

Views: 8

Topic

More From Gabriel Garcia Marquez

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.

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

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

He Shook My Hand And Said Goodbye With A Sentence That Might Have Been Either Good Advice Or A Threat: "take Good Care Of Yourself.

Invulnerable To Time, Dedicated To The Messianic Happiness Of Thinking For Us, Knowing That We Knew That He Would Not Take Any Decision For Us That Did Not Have Our Measure, For He Had Not Survived Everything Because Of His Inconceivable Courage Or His Infinite Prudence But Because He Was The Only One Among Us Who Knew The Real Size Of Our Destiny.

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.

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.

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

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.

...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.

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

All My Life, I've Been Frightened At The Moment I Sit Down To Write.

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

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.

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

One Hundred Years Of Solitude

There Had Never Been A Death So Foretold.

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.

...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.

The World Is Divided Into Those Who Screw And Those Who Do Not. He Distrusted Those Who Did Not—when They Strayed Form The Straight And Narrow It Was Something So Unusual For Them That They Bragged About Love As If They Had Just Invented It.

Everything That Belonged To Her Husband Made Her Weep Again: His Tasseled Slippers, His Pajamas Under The Pillow, The Space Of His Absence In The Dressing Table Mirror, His Own Odor On Her Skin. A Vague Thought Made Her Shudder: "the People One Loves Should Take All Their Things With Them When They Die.

I Have Learned That A Man Has The Right And Obligation To Look Down At Another Man, Only When That Man Needs Help To Get Up From The Ground.

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.

The Weak Would Never Enter The Kingdom Of Love.

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.

For A Week I Did Not Take Off My Mechanic's Coverall Day Or Night I Did Not Bathe Or Shave Or Brush My Teeth Because Love Taught Me Too Late That You Groom Yourself For Someone You Dress And Perfume Yourself For Someone And I'd Never Had Anyone To Do That For.

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.

He Said That Love Was An Emotion Contra Natura That Condemned Two Strangers To A Base And Unhealthy Dependence, And The More Intense It Was, The More Ephemeral.

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

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

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

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.

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

His Mysterious Resources Had Awakened In Her A Curiosity That Was Difficult To Resist, But She Had Never Imagined That Curiosity Was One Of The Many Masks Of Love.

Life Is But A Continual Succession Of Opportunities For Surviving.

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

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

Nothing In This World Was More Difficult Than Love.

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.

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

One Hundred Years Of Solitude

It's Enough For Me To Be Sure That You And I Exist At This Moment.

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.

Dr Urbino Did Not Agree: In His Opinion A Liberal President Was Exactly The Same As A Conservative President, But Not As Well Dressed.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

Curiosity Is One Of The Many Masks Of Love.

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

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

Nobody Deserves Your Tears, But Whoever Deserves Them Will Not Make You Cry.

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.

There Is No Greater Glory Than To Die For Love.

When He Went Through The Kitchen He Kissed Rebeca On The Forehead. "get Those Bad Thoughts Out Of Your Head," He Told Her. "you're Going To Be Happy.

I’ve Remained A Virgin For You.

Unfortunately Many Young Writers Are More Concerned With Fame Than With Their Own Work... It's Much More Important To Write Than To Be Written About.

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

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

Be Calm. God Awaits You At The Door.

Intrigued By That Enigma, He Dug So Deeply Into Her Sentiments That In Search Of Interest He Found Love, Because By Trying To Make Her Love Him He Ended Up Falling In Love With Her.

Falling In Love

One Hundred Years Of Solitude

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.

And Nevertheless, When They Watched Him Leave The House, This Man They Themselves Had Urged To Conquer The World, Then They Were The Ones Left With The Terror That He Would Never Return. That Was Their Life. Love, If It Existed, Was Something Separate: Another Life.

Please Allow Me To Wipe The Slate Clean. Age Has No Reality Except In The Physical World. The Essence Of A Human Being Is Resistant To The Passage Of Time. Our Inner Lives Are Eternal, Which Is To Say That Our Spirits Remain As Youthful And Vigorous As When We Were In Full Bloom. Think Of Love As A State Of Grace, Not The Means To Anything, But The Alpha And Omega. An End In Itself. Florentino Ariza, Love In The Time Of Cholera

Faulkner Is A Writer Who Has Had Much To Do With My Soul, But Hemingway Is The One Who Had The Most To Do With My Craft - Not Simply For His Books, But For His Astounding Knowledge Of The Aspect Of Craftsmanship In The Science Of Writing.

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.

Love Does Not Die, When Someone Gets Old, People Get Old, Because They Can Not Love Anymore.

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 A Love Of Perpetual Flight.

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

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

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.

[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.

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

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.

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

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.

Inspiration Gives No Warnings.

Shame Has Poor Memory.

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

He Was Weary Of The Uncertainty Of The Vicious Circle Of That Eternal War That Always Found Him In The Same Place, But Always Older, Wearier, Even More In The Position Of Not Knowing Why, Or How, Or Even When.

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.

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

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

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

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.

He Dared To Explore Her Withered Neck W/his Fingertips…her Hips W/their Decaying Bones, Her Thighs With Their Aging Veins.

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 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.

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

Give Me A Prejudice And I Will Move The World.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

For Those Who May Be Hurting Over Lost Love: Don't Cry Because It Is Over... Smile Because It Happened.

The Year I Turned Ninety, I Wanted To Give Myself The Gift Of A Night Of Wild Love With An Adolescent Virgin.

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

Falling In Love

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.

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

Hate And Love Are Reciprocal Passions.

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

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.

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

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

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.

I Plead Youth As A Mitigating Circumstance.

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

One Hundred Years Of Solitude

Morality, Too, Is A Question Of Time.

She Asked Him To Come And See Her That Night. He Agreed, In Order To Get Away, Knowing That He Was Incapable Of Going. But That Night, In His Burning Bed, He Understood That He Had To Go See Her, Even If He Were Not Capable. He Got Dressed By Feel, Listening In The Dark To His Brother's Calm Breathing, The Dry Cough Of His Father In The Next Room, The Asthma Of The Hens In The Courtyard, The Buzz Of The Mosquitoes, The Beating Of His Heart, And The Inordinate Bustle Of A World That He Had Not Noticed Until Then, And He Went Out In The Sleeping Street.

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.

How Will I Ever Get Out Of This Labyrinth!

Caribbean Reality Resembles The Wildest Imagination.

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

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

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.

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.

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

Ultimately, Literature Is Nothing But Carpentry.

The Truth Is That The First Changes Are So Slow They Pass Almost Unnoticed, And You Go On Seeing Yourself As You Always Were, From The Inside, But Others Observe You From The Outside.

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

Knowledge And Power

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

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

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.

The Only Everyday And Eternal Reality Was Love.

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

There Is Always Something Left To Love.

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 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.

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.

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.

Necessity Has The Face Of A Dog.

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

Falling In Love

This Soup Tastes Like Windows

Blood Circulated Through Her Veins With The Fluidity Of A Song That Branched Off Into The Most Hidden Areas Of Her Body And Returned To Her Heart, Purified By Love.

He Who Awaits Much Can Expect Little.

Procrastination

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

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.

Wisdom Comes To Us When It Can No Longer Do Any Good.

Do Not Allow Me To Forget You

Gaston Was Not Only A Fierce Lover, With Endless Wisdom And Imagination, But He Was Also, Perhaps, The First Man In The History Of The Species Who Had Made An Emergency Landing And Had Come Close To Killing Himself And His Sweetheart Simply To Make Love In A Field Of Violets.

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

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

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.

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

Forgive And Forget

One Hundred Years Of Solitude

He Is Ugly And Sad, But He Is All Love.

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

Always Tell What You Feel. Do What You Think.

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.

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

Only God Knows How Much I Love You.

I Became Aware That The Invincible Power That Has Moved The World Is Unrequited, Not Happy, 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.

For You Was I Born, For You Do I Have Life, For You Will I Die, For You Am I Now Dying.

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 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.

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

He Governed As If He Felt Predestined To Never Die

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.

If I Knew That Today Would Be The Last Time I’d See You, I Would Hug You Tight And Pray The Lord Be The Keeper Of Your Soul. If I Knew That This Would Be The Last Time You Pass Through This Door, I’d Embrace You, Kiss You, And Call You Back For One More. If I Knew That This Would Be The Last Time I Would Hear Your Voice, I’d Take Hold Of Each Word To Be Able To Hear It Over And Over Again. If I Knew This Is The Last Time I See You, I’d Tell You I Love You, And Would Not Just Assume Foolishly You Know It Already.

Fame Is Very Agreeable, But The Bad Thing Is That It Goes On 24 Hours A Day.

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.

No Matter What You Do This Year Or In The Next Hundred, You Will Be Dead Forever.

...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.

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.

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

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.

Jealousy Knows More Than Truth Does.

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.

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

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.

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

She Let Him Finish, Scratching His Head With The Tips Of Her Fingers, And Without His Having Revealed That He Was Weeping From Love, She Recognized Immediately The Oldest Sobs In The History Of Man.

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

I Don't Know Who Said That Novelists Read The Novels Of Others Only To Figure Out How They Are Written. I Believe It's True. We Aren't Satisfied With The Secrets Exposed On The Surface Of The Page: We Turn The Book Around To Find The Seams.

Then He Made One Last Effort To Search In His Heart For The Place Where His Affection Had Rotted Away, And He Could Not Find It.

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

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.

The Truth Is That I Know Very Few Novelists Who Have Been Satisfied With The Adaptation Of Their Books For The Screen.

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

She Was A Ghost In A Strange House That Overnight Had Become Immense And Solitary And Through Which She Wandered Without Purpose, Asking Herself In Anguish Which One Of Them Was Deader: The Man Who Had Died Or The Woman He Had Left Behind.

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.

The Most Important Thing Paris Gave Me Was A Perspective On Latin America. It Taught Me The Differences Between Latin America And Europe And Among The Latin American Countries Themselves Through The Latins I Met There.

Crazy People Are Not Crazy If One Accepts Their Reasoning.

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."

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

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.

There's No Greater Misfortune Than Dying Alone.

Four Geological Eras Had To Pass So That Human Beings Would Be Able To Outsing The Birds And Die For Love.

What Uncle Leo Xiii Never Suspected Was That His Nephew's Courage Did Not Come From The Need To Survive Or From A Brute Indifference Inherited From His Father, But From A Driving Need For Love, Which No Obstacle In This World Or The Next Would Ever Break.

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.

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

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

Barry Sonnenfeld

Gerard De Nerval

M. Night Shyamalan

Category