Amaranth, 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 Crest 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 Rinaldo 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 Amaranth had always had of her own tormented heart had triumphed in the end.

— Gabriel García Márquez

And only after he said it did he realize that among the countless suicides he could remember, this was the first with cyanide that had not been caused by the sufferings of love. Then something changed in the tone of his voice.“And when you do find one, observe with care,” he said to the intern:“they almost always have crystals in their heart.

— Gabriel García Márquez

And realized that death was not only a permanent probability, as he had always believed, but an immediate reality.

— Gabriel García Márquez

And the two of them loved each other for a long time in silence without making love again.

— Gabriel García Márquez

Arcadia had seen her many times working in her parents' small food store, but he had never taken a good look at her because she had that rare virtue of never existing completely except at the opportune moment.

— Gabriel García Márquez

...as he discovered in the course of his uncountable years that a lie is more comfortable than doubt, more useful than love, more lasting than truth...

— Gabriel García Márquez

...as he was combing his hair in front of the mirror...only then did he understand that a man knows when he is growing older because he begins to look like his father.

— Gabriel García Márquez

As I kissed her the heat of her body increased, and it exhaled a wild, untamed fragrance.

— Gabriel García Márquez

At eight-one years of age he had enough lucidity to realize that he was attached to this world by a few slender threads that could break painlessly with a simple change of position while he slept, and if he did all he could to keep those threads intact, it was because of his terror of not finding God in the darkness of death.

— Gabriel García Márquez

At eighty-one years of age he had enough lucidity to realize that he was attached to this world by a few slender threads that could break painlessly with a simple change of position while he slept, and if he did all he could to keep those threads intact, it was because of his terror of not finding God in the darkness of death.

— Gabriel García Márquez