“Lost in the solitude of his immense power, he began to lose direction.”

“That was the state of the world when I began to be aware of my family environment, and I cannot evoke it in any other way: sorrows, griefs, uncertainties in the solitude of an immense house.”

“He pleaded so much that he lost his voice. His bones began to fill with words.”

“but he only found her in the image that saturated his private and terrible solitude.”

“[...] not knowing what he was doing because he did not know where his feet were or where his head was, or whose feet or whose head, and feeling that he could no longer resist the glacial rumbling of his kidneys and the air of his intestines, and fear, and the bewildered anxiety to flee and at the same time stay forever in that exasperated silence and that fearful solitude.”

“He really had been through death, but he had returned because he could not bear the solitude.”

“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.”