“Very well, I will marry you if you promise not to make me eat eggplant.”

“When I wake up," he said, "remind me that I'm going to marry her.”

“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.”

“Well," Aureliano said. "Tell me what it is."Pilar Ternera bit her lips with a sad smile."That you would be good in a war," she said. "Where you put your eye, you put your bullet.”

“It is impossible to explain. But what I like most is to eat.”

“It's enough for me to be sure that you and I exist at this moment.”

“Thank God I found my Chinaman in time. It's like being married to your little finger, but he's all mine.”