“Horses frighten me as much as chickens do,’ he said.‘That is too bad, because lack of communication with horses has impeded human progress,’ said Abrenuncio. ‘If we ever broke down the barriers, we could produce the centaur.”

“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.”

“He was still too young to know that the heart's memory eliminates the bad and magnifies the good, and that thanks to this artifice we manage to endure the burden of the past.”

“I could not resist the temptation to ask: Tell me something, Damiana: what do you recall? I wasn't recalling anything, she said, but your question makes me remember. I felt a weight in my chest. I've never fallen in love, I told her. She replied without hesitation: I have. And she concluded, not interrupting her work: I cried over you for twenty-two years. My heart skipped a beat. Looking for a dignified way out, I said: We would have made a good team. Well, it's wrong of you to say so now, she said, because you're no good to me anymore even as a consolation. As she was leaving the house, she said in the most natural way: You won't believe me but thanks be to God, I'm still a virgin.”

“And only after he said it did he realize that among the countless suicides he could remember, this was the first with cyanide that had not been caused by the sufferings of love. Then something changed in the tone of his voice.“And when you do find one, observe with care,” he said to the intern:“they almost always have crystals in their heart.”

“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.”

“Let me stay here," he said. "There was soap.”