Quotes by Gabriel García Márquez

They were people whose lives were slow, who did not see themselves growing old, or falling sick, or dying, but who disappeared little by little in their own time, turning into memories, mists from other days, until they were absorbed into oblivion.

You people have a religion of death that fills you with the joy and courage to confront it...I do not. I believe the only essential thing is to be alive.- Abrenucio

The people one loves should take all their things with them when they die.

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.

She nailed it to the wall with her well-aimed dart, like a butterfly with no will whose sentence has always been written.

The ferocity of Santiago Nasars fate, which had collected twenty years of happiness from him not only with his death but also with the dismemberment of his body and its dispersion and extermination.

Disbelief is more resistant than faith because it is sustained by the senses.

One had to live a long time to know a mans true nature.

One minute of reconciliation is worth more than a whole life of friendship!

Both described at the same time how it was always March there and always Monday, and then they understood that José Arcadio Buendía was not as crazy as the family said, but that he was the only one who had enough lucidity to sense the truth of the fact that time also stumbled and had accidents and could therefore splinter and leave an eternalized fragment in a room.

But when they changed their plans time and time again, the dates became confused, the periods were mislaid, and one day seemed so much like another that one could not feel them pass.

The world must be all fucked up, he said then, when men travel first class and literature goes as freight.

In the end he read everything that came his way, and he did not have a favorite author but rather many who had been favorites at different times.

Amaranta, however, whose hardness of heart frightened her, whose concentrated bitterness made her bitter, suddenly became clear to her in the final analysis as the most tender woman who had ever existed, and she understood with pitying clarity that the unjust tortures to which she had submitted Pietro Crespi had not been dictated by a desire for vengeance, as everyone had thought, nor had the slow martyrdom with which she had frustrated the life of Colonel Gerineldo Márquez been determined by the gall of her bitterness, as everyone had thought, but that both actions had been a mortal struggle between a measureless love and an invincible cowardice, and that the irrational fear that Amaranta had always had of her own tormented heart had triumphed in the end.

He always considered death an unavoidable professional hazard.

Make no mistake: peaceful madmen are ahead of the future.

Iturbide exclaimed: Dont frighten me, General!Dont be frightened, said the General in a calm voice. Go to Mexico, even if they kill you or even if you die. And go now while youre still young, because one day it will be too late, and then you wont feel at home here or there. Youll feel like a stranger everywhere, and thats worse than being dead. He looked him straight in the eye, placed his open hand on his own chest, and concluded:Just look at me.

my heart has more rooms in it than a whore house

Horses frighten me as much as chickens do,’ he said.‘That is too bad, because lack of communication with horses has impeded human progress,’ said Abrenuncio. ‘If we ever broke down the barriers, we could produce the centaur.

Dr Urbino did not agree: in his opinion a Liberal president was exactly the same as a Conservative president, but not as well dressed.