“It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love.”

“The only certainty was that they took everything with them: money, December breezes, the bread knife, thunder at 3 in the afternoon, the scent of jasmines, love. All that remained were the dusty almond trees, the reverberating streets, the houses of wood and roofs of rusting tin with their taciturn inhabitants, devastated by memories.”

“...the invincible power that has moved the world is unrequited, not happy love”

“O became aware that the invincible power that has moved the world is unrequited, not happy, love.”

“I became aware that the invincible power that has moved the world is unrequited, not happy, love.”

“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.”

“and it was always without pretensions of loving or being loved although always in the hope of finding something that resembled love but without the problems of love.”