To him she seemed so beautiful, so seductive, so different from ordinary people, that he could not understand why no one was as disturbed as he by the clicking of her heels on the paving stones, why no one else's heart was wild with the breeze stirre...
He allowed himself to be swayed by his conviction that human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them, but that life obliges them over and over again to give birth to themselves.
...he allowed himself to be swayed by his conviction that human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them, but that life obliges them them over and over again to give birth to themselves.
Ya me sobrará tiempo para descansar cuando me muera, pero esta eventualidad no está todavía en mis proyectos.
Each man is master of his own death and all that we can do when the time comes is to help him die without fear of pain.
Eran gentes de vidas lentas, a las cuales no se les veía volverse viejas, ni enfermarse ni morir, sino que iban desvaneciéndose poco a poco en su tiempo, volviéndose recuerdos, brumas de otra época, hasta que los asimilaba el olvido.
He was invaded by an unreasoning calm, which he interpreted as an omen that nothing new was going to happen, that everything he had done in his life had been in vain, that he could not go on: it was the end.
Remember that everything that is good, whatever it’s origin, comes from the holy spirit.
One could be happy not only without love, but despite it.
The act was an exorcism of relief for Florentino Ariza, for when he put the violin back into its case and walked down the dead streets without looking back, he no longer felt that he was leaving the next morning but that he had gone away many years b...
She wanted to be herself again, to recover all that she had been obliged to give up in half a century of servitude that had doubtless made her happy but which, once her husband was dead, did not leave her even the vestiges of her identity.
But that afternoon he asked himself, with his infinite capacity for illusion, if such pitiless indifference might not be a subterfuge for hiding the torments of love.
One had to live a long time to know a man's true nature.
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.
He is ugly and sad... but he is all love.
With her Florentino Ariza learned what he had already experienced many times without realizing it: that one can be in love with several people at the same time, feel the same sorrow with each, and not betray any of them. Alone in the midst of the cro...
A century ago, life screwed that poor man and me because we were too young, and now they want to do the same thing because we are too old.
The world is divided into those who screw and those who do not. He distrusted those who did not—when they strayed from the straight and narrow it was something so unusual for them that they bragged about love as if they had just invented it.
