Gabriel Garcia Marquez

“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.”

“...there was no secret under the sun for the drivers on Paseo Colón.”

“it is a triumph of life that old people lose their memories of inessential things...”

“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.”

“I tell myself now, that ever since I was little my sense of social decency has been more developed than my sense of death.”

“On the morning that they were going to kill him, Santiago Nasar got up at five-thirty in the morning to wait for the boat bishop was coming on.”

“There had never been a death so foretold.”

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

“La vita non è quella che si è vissuta, ma quella che si ricorda e come la si ricorda per raccontarla.”

“For at the height of pleasure he had experienced a revelation that he could not believe, that he even refused to admit, which was that his illusory love for Fermina Daza could be replaced by an earthly passion.”

“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.”

“It was the last that remained of a past whose annihilation had not taken place because it was still in a process of annihilation, consuming itself from within, ending at every moment but never ending its ending.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Amaranta, however, whose hardness of heart frightened her, whose concentrated bitterness made her bitter, suddenly became clear to her in the final analysis as the most tender woman who had ever existed, and she understood with pitying clarity that the unjust tortures to which she had submitted Pietro Crespi had not been dictated by a desire for vengeance, as everyone had thought, nor had the slow martyrdom with which she had frustrated the life of Colonel Gerineldo Márquez been determined by the gall of her bitterness, as everyone had thought, but that both actions had been a mortal struggle between a measureless love and an invincible cowardice, and that the irrational fear that Amaranta had always had of her own tormented heart had triumphed in the end.”

“More than mother and son, they were accomplices in solitude.”

“On rainy afternoons, embroidering with a group of friends on the begonia porch, she would lose the thread of the conversation and a tear of nostalgia would salt her palate when she saw the strips of damp earth and the piles of mud that the earthworms had pushed up in the garden. Those secret tastes, defeated in the past by oranges and rhubarb, broke out into an irrepressible urge when she began to weep. She went back to eating earth. The first time she did it almost out of curiosity, sure that the bad taste would be the best cure for the temptation. And, in fact, she could not bear the earth in her mouth. But she persevered, overcome by the growing anxiety, and little by little she was getting back her ancestral appetite, the taste of primary minerals, the unbridled satisfaction of what was the original food. She would put handfuls of earth in her pockets, and ate them in small bits without being seen, with a confused feeling of pleasure and rage, as she instructed her girl friends in the most difficult needlepoint and spoke about other men, who did not deserve the sacrifice of having one eat the whitewash on the walls because of them. The handfuls of earth made the only man who deserved that show of degradation less remote and more certain, as if the ground that he walked on with his fine patent leather boots in another part of the world were transmitting to her the weight and the temperature of his blood in a mineral savor that left a harsh aftertaste in her mouth and a sediment of peace in her heart.”

“From being used so much, kneaded with sweat and sighs, the air in the room had begun to turn to mud.”

“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.”

“The woman let out an expansive laugh that resounded through the house like a spray of broken glass.”

“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.”

“The Captain looked at Fermina Daza and saw on her eyelashes the first glimmer of wintry frost. Then he looked at Florentino Ariza, his invincible power, his intrepid love, and he was overwhelmed by the belated suspicion that it is life, more than death, that has no limits.”

“In some way impossible to ascertain, after so many years of absense, Jose Arcadio was still an autumnal child, terribly sad and solitary.”

“براي هر دقيقه اي كه چشمانمان را ببنديم ، به مدت شصت ثانيه از نور و روشنايي محروم خاهيم شد .”

“La peor forma de extrañar a alguien es estar sentado a su lado y saber que nunca lo podrás tener.”

“feliz num mundo próprio de realidades simples”

“A trickle of blood came out under the door, crossed the living room, went out into the street, continued on in a straight line across the uneven terraces, went down steps and climbed over curbs, passed along the Street of the Turks, turned a corner to the right and another to the left, made a right angle at the Buendía house, went in under the closed door, crossed through the parlor, hugging the walls so as not to stain the rugs, went on to the other living room, made a wide curve to avoid the dining-room table, went along the porch with the begonias, and passed without being seen under Amaranta's chair as she gave an arithmetic lesson to Aureliano José, and went through the pantry and came out in the kitchen, where Úrsula was getting ready to crack thirty-six eggs to make bread."Holy Mother of God!" Úrsula shouted.”

“Tell me something, old friend: why are you fighting?"What other reason could there be?" Colonel Gerineldo Marquez answered. "For the great Liberal party."You're lucky because you know why," he answered. "As far as I'm concerned, I've come to realize only just now that I'm fighting because of pride."That's bad," Colonel Gerineldo Marquez said.Colonel Aureliano Buendia was amused at his alarm. "Naturally," he said. "But in any case, it's better than not knowing why you're fighting." He looked him in the eyes and added with a smile:Or fighting, like you, for something that doesn't have any meaning for anyone.”

“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.”

“Nunca dejes de sonreír, ni siquiera cuando estés triste, porque nunca sabes quien se puede enamorar de tu sonrisa.”

“El secreto de una buena vejez no es mas que un pacto honrado con la soledad.”

“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.”

“...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.”

“bagiku, tampak bahwa, bagaikan tanaman yg hidup, aku merupakan gambaran suatu dunia yang ideal; bahwa aku bukan hanya terdiri dari apa yang kuingin, apa yang kupikir -- aku juga adalah apa yang tidak aku cintai; apa yang TIDAK aku inginkan untuk menjelma”

“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.”

“zrozumiał ostatecznie coś, co sam o tym nie wiedząc, wielokrotnie przeczuwał: że można jednocześnie i z równym bólem kochać wiele kobiet, żadnej z nich nie zdradzając. (...) ,,Serce ma więcej pokoi niż mój k*****ki hotel".”

“Around the time they were preparing Jose Arcadio for the seminary she had already made a detailed recapitulation of life in the house since the founding of Macondo and had completely changed the opinion that she had always had of its descendants. She realized that Colonel Aureliano Buendia had not lost his love for the family because he had been hardened by the war, as she had thought before, but that he had never loved anyone... Amaranta, however, whose hardness of heart frightened her, whose concentrated bitterness made her bitter, suddenly became clear to her in the final analysis as the most tender woman who had ever existed, and she understood with pitying clarity that the unjust tortures to which she had submitted Pietro Crespi had not been dictated by a desire for vengeance, as everyone had thought, nor had the slow martyrdom with which she had frustrated the life of Colonel Gerineldo Marquez been determined by the gall of her bitterness, as everyone had thought, but that both actions had been a mortal struggle between a measureless love and an invincible cowardice, and that the irrational fear that Amaranta had always had of her own tormented heart had triumphed in the end. It was during that time that Ursula began to speak Rebeca's name, bringing back the memory of her with an old love that was exalted by tardy repentance and a sudden admiration, coming to understand that only she, Rebeca , the one who had never fed of her milk but only of the earth of the land and the whiteness of the walls... Rebeca, the one with an impatient heart, the one with a fierce womb, was the only one who had the unbridled courage that Ursula had wanted for her line.”

“He did not dare to console her, knowing that it would have been like consoling a tiger run thru by a spear.”

“She felt the abyss of disenchantment.”

“He thought that the world would make more rapid progress without the burden of old people.”

“The world is divided into those who screw and those who do not. He distrusted those who did not—when they strayed from the straight and narrow it was something so unusual for them that they bragged about love as if they had just invented it.”

“I’ve remained a virgin for you.”

“he dared to explore her withered neck w/his fingertips…her hips w/their decaying bones, her thighs with their aging veins.”

“She would not shed a tear, she would not waste the rest of her years simmering in the maggot broth of memory.”

“Today I know I was right. 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. My Sunday columns were there, life an archeological relic among the ruins of the past, and they realized they were not only for the old but also for the young who were not afraid of aging.”

“Perhaps this is what the stories meant when they called somebody heartsick. Your heart and your stomach and your whole insides felt empty and hollow and aching.”

“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.”

“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.”

“In the plenitude of their relationship, Florentina Ariza asked himself which of the two was love: the turbulent bed or the peaceful Sunday afternoons, and Sara Noriega calmed him with the simple argument that love was everything they did naked. She said, 'Spiritual love from the waist up and physical love from the waist down.”