“Nice people with common sense do not make interesting characters. They only make good former spouses.”

“Just as Daniel Balalcazar said, it makes no sense to suffer in advance a misfortune that may never occur.”

“It is common knowledge that no man that women flock to boasts of his conquests. Those who do, lie.”

“Do you truly believe that life is fair, Senor de la Vega?-No, maestro, but I plan to do everything in my power to make it so.”

“The only good thing about marriage is becoming a widow”

“She sowed in my mind the idea that reality is not only what we see on the surface; it has a magical dimension as well and, if we so desire, it is legitimate to enhance it and color it to make our journey through life less trying.”

“She had been born to cradle other people's children, wear their hand-me-down clothing, eat their leftovers, live on borrowed happiness and grief, grow old beneath other people's roofs, die one day in her miserable little room in the far courtyard in a bed that did not belong to her, and be buried in a common grave in the public cemetery.”