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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.

-Gabriel Garcia Marquez

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What Does He Say?'

Gabriel Garcia Marquez

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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.

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In That Way The Long-awaited Visit, For Which Both Had Prepared Questions And Had Even Anticipated Answers, Was Once More The Usual Everyday Conversation.

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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.

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

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.

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

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The Spirit Of Her Invincible Heart Guided Her Through The Shadows.

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

Hate And Love Are Reciprocal Passions.

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.

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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.

In The End All Books Are Written For Your Friends.

One Hundred Years Of Solitude

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

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The Only Virgos Left In The World Are People Like You Who Were Born In August.

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

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

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One Hundred Years Of Solitude

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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.

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

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

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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.

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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.

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.

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

One Hundred Years Of Solitude

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.

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.

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

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

Fatality Makes Us Invisible.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

Surrealism Comes From The Reality Of Latin America.

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

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.

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.

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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.

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.

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I Want The Same One, The Way She Always Is, Without Failures, Without Fights, Without Bad Memories.

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.

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

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Rest Of Your Life

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.

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.

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

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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.

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

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

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.

Love Becomes Greater And Nobler In Calamity.

We'll Grow Old Waiting.

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.

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

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

It Is Not That The Girl Is Unfit For Everything, It Is That She Is Not Of This World.

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

He Always Considered Death An Unavoidable Professional Hazard.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

I'll Never Fall In Love Again... It's Like Having Two Souls At The Same Time.

Falling In Love

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

Forgive And Forget

One Hundred Years Of Solitude

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

Give Me A Prejudice And I Will Move The World.

A Man Only Has The Right To Look Down At Another When He Helps Him To Lift Himself Up.

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.

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

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

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.

He Allowed Himself To Be Swayed By His Conviction That Human Beings Are Not Born Once And For All On The Day Their Mothers Give Birth To Them, But That Life Obliges Them Over And Over Again To Give Birth To Themselves.

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

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.

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

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.

I’ve Remained A Virgin For You.

If You Love Something - Let. If It Is Yours - It Will Come Back. I Love You Not Because Of Who You Are, But For Who I Am When I'm With You.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

Necessity Has The Face Of A Dog.

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

Nobody Teaches Life Anything.

How Will I Ever Get Out Of This Labyrinth!

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.

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.

One Had To Live A Long Time To Know A Man's True Nature.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Nothing In This World Was More Difficult Than Love.

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

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.

[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.

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.

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 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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

One Hundred Years Of Solitude

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

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.

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.

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

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

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