“Even when the winds of misfortune blow, amazing things can still happen.”

“There's no greater misfortune than dying alone.”

“Do whatever you want, but don't lose that child," she said. "There's no greater misfortune than dying alone.”

“Just as real events are forgotten, some that never were can be in our memories as if they happened.”

“Gabito isn't deceiving anyone," she said with an innocent smile, "but sometimes it happens that even God needs to make weeks that are two years long.”

“For the city, his city, stood unchanging on the edge of time: the same burning dry city of his nocturnal terrors and the solitary pleasures of puberty, where flowers rusted and salt corroded, where nothing had happened for four centuries except a slow aging among withered laurels and putrefying swamps. In winter sudden devastating downpours flooded the latrines and turned the streets into sickening bogs. In summer an invisible dust as harsh as red-hot chalk was blown into even the best-protected corners of the imagination by mad winds that took the roofs off the houses and carried away children through the air.”

“He was shaken by the overwhelming revelation that the headlong race between his misfortunes ad his dreams was at that moment reaching the finish line. The rest was darkness, 'Damn it,' he sighed. 'How will I ever get out of this labyrinth!”