“The driver warned me: Be careful, scholar, they kill in that house. I replied: If it's for love it doesn't matter.”

“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.”

“...there was no secret under the sun for the drivers on Paseo Colón.”

“Nevertheless, no matter how much they killed themselves with work, no matter how much money they eked out, and no matter how many schemes they thought of, their guardian angels were asleep with fatigue while they put in coins and took them out trying to get just enough to live with.”

“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.”

“I must warn you that the books I like are not necessarily the ones I think are the best. I like them for various reasons not always easy to explain.”

“She was the only person in the house, of either sex, who did not seem to have a heart pierced by the sorrow of thwarted love.”