“It's the tide. It's the dismal tide. It's not the one thing.”

“Though that's faulty logic because I did cry during Gandalf's death when I read Lord of the Rings for the first time, which is said to be comparable for boys to Beth's death in Little Women for girls.”

“Isn't that something-to know your own soul by hearsay, instead of its own tidings? Why should I let a preacher tell me if I had one or not? If I could believe I hada soul, all by myself, then I could listen to its tidings all by myself.”

“En un país donde puede pasar TODO, no pasa NADA.”

“Si alguna vez voy a regresar a México con el vientre casi a punto de estallar, será no porque esté preñada nada más que de viento ni preñada de un hijo tuyo o del Coronel Rodríguez: será de tempestades y borrascas, de torbellinos, para que cuando los mexicanos me den de palos como siempre lo hicieron y reviente, les llueva, juntas, Maximliano, todas las desgracias y las calamidades que se merecen por haber sido tan ingratos con nosotros.”

“This is a work of fiction.If certain characters resemble people in real life, it is because certain people in real life resemble characters from a novel.Nobody, therefore, is entitled to feel included in this book.Nobody, by the same token, to feel excluded.”

“And so we continued, making love, for over two hundred years and when we finished, five hours later, we realized that our building had been knocked down three months previously and that our room had become a space ship of flesh and bone.”