Gabriel Garcia Marquez

“Los idiomas hay que saberlos cuando uno va a vender algo. Pero cuando uno va a comprar, todo el mundo le entiende como sea.”

“Desde entonces manifestaba el párroco los primeros síntomas del delirio senil que lo llevó a decir, años más tarde, que probablemente el diablo había ganado la rebelión contra Dios, y que era aquél quien estaba sentado en el trono celeste, sin revelar su verdadera identidad para atrapar a los incautos.”

“A falcon who chases a warlike crane can only hope for a life of pain.”

“The Marquis dusted off the Italian theorbo. He restrung it, tuned it with a perseverance that could be understood only as love, and once again accompanied the songs of the past, sung with the good voice and bad ear that neither years nor troubled memories had changed. 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.”

“Florentino Ariza was left with the nagging suspicion that this was not her last word. He believed that when a woman says no, she is waiting to be urged before making her final decision, but with her he could not risk making the same mistake twice.”

“That may be the reason he does so many things," she said, "so that he will not have to think.”

“En una de las colinas, viendo a Roma a sus pies, don Simón Rodríguez le soltó una de sus profecías altisonantes sobre el destino de las Américas. Él lo vio más claro. "Lo que hay que hacer con esos chapetones de porra es sacarlos a patadas de Venezuela" dijo. "Y le juro que lo voy a hacer.”

“Entonces acababa de cumplir 20 años, era viudo reciente y rico, estaba deslumbrado por la coronación de Napoleón Bonaparte, se había hecho masón, recitaba de memoria en voz alta sus páginas favoritas de Emilio y La Nueva Eloísa, de Rousseau, que habían sido sus libros de cabecera durante mucho tiempo, y había viajado a pie, de la mano de su maestro y con su morral a la espalda, a través de casi toda Europa.”

“¡Dios de los pobres!" suspiró el general. "Estamos llegando". Y así era. Pues ahí estaba el mar, y del otro lado del mar estaba el mundo.”

“Caracas era todavía una población remota de la provincia colonial; fea, triste, chata, pero las tardes del Ávila era desgarradoras en la nostalgia.”

“If they believe it in the Bible, I don't see why they shouldn't believe it from me.”

“No importa lo que los médicos dicen, la rabia en los seres humanos con frecuencia es una delas trampas del enemigo.”

“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.”

“A century ago, life screwed that poor man and me because we were too young, and now they want to do the same thing because we are too old.”

“In the beginning, when the world was new and nothing had a name, my father took me to see the ice.”

“Timp de sase ore examina toate lucrurile, încercînd sa gaseasca o deosebire fata de aspectul lor din ziua precedenta, straduindu-se sa descopere în ele o cît de mica schimbare care sa-i dezvaluie scurgerea timpului.”

“Then they both kept on knifing him against the door with alternate and easy stabs, floating in the dazzling backwater they had found on the other side of fear.”

“The mayor informed General Petronio San Roman of the episode, down to the last literal phrase, in an alarming telegram. General San Roman must have followed his son's wishes to the letter, because he didn't come for him, but sent his wife with their daughters and two other older women who seemed to be her sisters. They came on a cargo boat, locked in mourning up to their necks because of Bayardo San Roman's misfortunes, and with their hair hanging loose in grief. Before stepping onto land, they took off their shoes and went barefoot through the streets up to the hilltop in the burning dust of noon, pulling out strands of hair by the roots and wailing loudly with such high-pitched shrieks that they seemed to be shouts of joy. I watched them pass from Magdalena Oliver's balcony, and I remember thinking that distress like theirs could only be put on in order to hide other, greater shames.”

“She was certain that the Vicario brothers were not as eager to carry out the sentence as to find someone who would do them the favor of stopping them.”

“e quando houve em cada prato uma dose igual de ministro da Defesa com recheio de pinhões e ervas aromáticas ele deu a ordem de começar, bom proveito, meus senhores.”

“Le contestaban que durante muchos años habían estado sin cura, arreglandonegocios del alma directamente con Dios, y habían perdido la malicia del pecado mortal.”

“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.”

“La memoria del corazón elimina los malos recuerdos y magnifica los buenos, y que gracias a ese artilugio logramos sobrellevar el pasado.”

“...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.”

“Él le confesó que nunca se había atrevido a montar."Temo tanto a los caballos como a las gallinas," dijo."Es una lástima, porque la incomunicación con los caballos ha retrasado la humanidad," dijo Abrenuncio. "Si alguna vez la rompiéramos podríamos fabricar el centauro.”

“La ciudad estaba sumergida en su marasmo de siglos, pero no faltó quien vislumbrara el rostro macilento, los ojos fugaces del caballero incierto con sus tafetanes de luto, cuya carroza abandonó el recinto amurallado y se dirigió a campo traviesa hacia el cerro de San Lázaro.”

“El maestro de obra me explicó sin asombro que el cabello humano crecía un centímetro por mes hasta después de la muerte, y veintidós metros le parecieron un buen promedio para doscientos años”

“No hay medicina que no cure lo que no cura la felicidad.”

“Siempre he creído que él toma más en cuenta el amor que la fe.”

“Le dijo que el amor era un sentimiento contra natura, que condenaba a dos desconocidos a una dependencia mezquina e insalubre, tanto más efímera cuanto más intensa.”

“İnsanın oturduğu toprakların altında ölüleri yoksa, o adam o toprağın insanı değildir.”

“Está mal que tengan en el cuarto de servicio un bote de remos que no les sirve para nada — dijo el padre—. Pero está peor que quieran tener además equipos de buceo.”

“A person does not belong to a place until there is someone dead under the ground.”

“Once he had told her something that she could not imagine: that 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.”

“There is bound to be someone driven mad by love who will give you the chance to study the effects of gold cyanide on a cadaver. And when you do find one, observe with care, they almost always have crystals in their heart”

“Give me a prejudice and I will move the world.”

“Descubrí que mi obsesión de que cada cosa estuviera en su puesto, cada asunto en su tiempo, cada palabra en su estilo, no era el premio merecido de una mente en orden, sino al contrario, todo un sistema de simulación inventado por mí para ocultar el desorden de mi naturaleza. Descubrí que no soy disciplinado por virtud, sino como reacción contra mi negligencia; que parezco generoso por encubrir mi mezquindad, que me paso de prudente por mal pensado, que soy conciliador para no sucumbir a mis cóleras reprimidas, que sólo soy puntual para que no se sepa cuan poco me importa el tiempo ajeno. Descubrí, en fin, que el amor no es un estado del alma sino un signo del zodíaco.”

“I can't think of any film that improved on a good novel, but I can think of many good films that came from very bad novels.”

“She took refuge in her newborn son. she had felt him leave her body with a sensation of relief at freeing herself from something that did not belong to her and she had been horrified at herself when she confirmed that she did not feel the slightest affection for that calf from her womb the midwife showed her in the raw, smeared with grease and blood and with the umbilical cord rolled around his neck. But in her lonliness in the palace she learned to know him, they learned to know each other, and she discovered with great delight that one does not love one's children just because they are one's children but becuase of the friendship formed while raising them.”

“Friend is the person that holds your hand and touches your heart!”

“He had not stopped looking into her eyes, and she showed no signs of faltering. He gave a deep sigh and recited:"O sweet treasures, discovered to my sorrow." She did not understand."It is a verse by the grandfather of my great-great-grandmother," he explained. "He wrote three eclogues, two elegies, five songs, and forty sonnets. Most of them for a Portuguese lady of very ordinary charms who was never his, first because he was married, and then because she married another man and died before he did.""Was he a priest too?" "A soldier," he said.Something stirred in the heart of Sierva María, for she wanted to hear the verse again. He repeated it, and this time he continued, in an intense, well-articulated voice, until he had recited the last of the forty sonnets by the cavalier of amours and arms Don Garcilaso de la Vega, killed in his prime by a stone hurled in battle.When he had finished, Cayetano took Sierva María's hand and placed it over his heart. She felt the internal clamor of his suffering."I am always in this state," he said.And without giving his panic an opportunity, he unburdened himself of the dark truth that did not permit him to live. He confessed that every moment was filled with thoughts of her, that everything he ate and drank tasted of her, that she was his life, always and everywhere, as only God had the right and power to be, and that the supreme joy of his heart would be to die with her. He continued to speak without looking at her, with the same fluidity and passion as when he recited poetry, until it seemed to him that Sierva María was sleeping. But she was awake, her eyes, like those of a startled deer, fixed on him. She almost did not dare to ask:"And now?""And now nothing," he said. "It is enough for me that you know."He could not go on. Weeping in silence, he slipped his arm beneath her head to serve as a pillow, and she curled up at his side. And so they remained, not sleeping, not talking, until the roosters began to crow and he had to hurry to arrive in time for five-o'clock Mass. Before he left, Sierva María gave him the beautiful necklace of Oddúa: eighteen inches of mother-of-pearl and coral beads.Panic had been replaced by the yearning in his heart. Delaura knew no peace, he carried out his tasks in a haphazard way, he floated until the joyous hour when he escaped the hospital to see Sierva María. He would reach the cell gasping for breath, soaked by the perpetual rains, and she would wait for him with so much longing that only his smile allowed her to breathe again. One night she took the initiative with the verses she had learned after hearing them so often. 'When I stand and contemplate my fate and see the path along which you have led me," she recited. And asked with a certain slyness: "What's the rest of it?""I reach my end, for artless I surrendered to one who is my undoing and my end," he said.She repeated the lines with the same tenderness, and so they continued until the end of the book, omitting verses, corrupting and twisting the sonnets to suit themselves, toying with them with the skill of masters. They fell asleep exhausted. At five the warder brought in breakfast, to the uproarious crowing of the roosters, and they awoke in alarm. Life stopped for them.”

“Una noche se embadurnaron de pies a cabeza con melocotones en almíbar, se lamieron como perros y se amaron como locos en el piso del corredor, y fueron despertados por un torrente de hormigas carniceras que se disponían a devorarlos vivos”

“We'll grow old waiting.”

“Get down! Get down!"The people in front had already done so, swept down by the wave of bullets. The survivors, instead of getting down, tried to go back to the small square, and the panic became a dragon's tail as one compact wave ran against another which was moving in the opposite direction, towards the other dragon's tail in the street across the way, where the machine guns were firing without cease. They were penned in, swirling about in a gigantic whirlwind that little by little was being reduced to its epicenter as the edges were systematically being cut off all around like an onion being peeled by the insatiable and methodical shears of the machine guns.”

“The captain gave the order to fire. Arcadio barely had time to put out his chest and raise his head, not understanding where the hot liquid that burned his thighs was pouring from.”

“Nu trecea o clipă fără să se gândească la ea, tot ce mânca şi bea avea gustul ei, viaţa era ea, la orice oră şi pretutindeni, cum numai Domnul avea dreptul şi puterea de a fi şi că bucuria supremă a sufletului său ar fi să moară împreună cu ea.”

“I dare to think that it is this outsized reality, and not just its literary expression, that has deserved the attention of the Swedish Academy of Letters. A reality not of paper, but one that lives within us and determines each instant of our countless daily deaths, and that nourishes a source of insatiable creativity, full of sorrow and beauty, of which this roving and nostalgic Colombian is but one cipher more, singled out by fortune. Poets and beggars, musicians and prophets, warriors and scoundrels, all creatures of that unbridled reality, we have had to ask but little of imagination, for our crucial problem has been a lack of conventional means to render our lives believable. This, my friends, is the crux of our solitude.”

“Nobody teaches life anything.”

“l día en que la mierda tenga algún valor los pobres nacerán sin culo,”

“She would say, "Someone should invent something to do with things you cannot use anymore but that you still cannot throw out.”