(Gabriel Garcia Márquez)

• To him she seemed to 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 stirred by the sighs of her veils, why everyone did not go mad with the movements of her braid, the flight of her hands, the gold of her laughter. (pg. 100)
• He had taught her that nothing one does in bed is immoral if it helps to perpetuate love. And something else that from that time on would be her reason for living: he convinced her that one comes into the world with a predetermined allotment of lays, and whoever does not use them for whatever reason, one's own or someone else's, willingly or unwillingly, loses them forever. (pg. 151)
• He delighted in the scent of almonds that came wafting back to him from his innermost being, and he longed to know how she thought women in films should fall in love so that their loves would cause less pain than they did in life. (pg. 255)
• Deprived of one, he wanted to be with them all at the same time, which is what he always wanted whenever he was fearful. For even during his most difficult times and at his worst moments, he had maintained some link, no matter how weak, with his countless lovers of so many years: he always kept track of their lives. (pg. 269)
• ...one can be in love with several people at the same time, feel the same sorrow with each, and not betray any of them. (pg. 270)
• "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." (pg. 323)
• "What I would like is to walk out of this house, and keep going, going, going, and never come back" (pg. 324)
• She felt immense relief at the thought of spending eight days traveling upriver and five on the return, with no more than the bare necessities: half a dozen cotton dresses, her toiletries, a pair of shoes for embarking and disembarking, her house slippers for the journey and nothing else: her lifetime dream. (pg. 325)
• "It is incredible how one can be happy for so many years in the midst of so many squabbles, so many problems, damn it, and not really know if it was love or not." (pg. 329)
• "But when a woman decides to sleep with a man, there is no wall she will not scale, no fortress she will not destroy, no moral consideration she will not ignore at its very root: there is not God worth worrying about." (pg. 329-330)
• It was as if they had leapt over the arduous calvary of conjugal life and gone straight to the heart of love. They were together in silence like an old married couple wary of life, beyond the pitfalls of passion, beyond the brutal mockery of hope and the phantoms of disillusion: beyond love. For they had lived together long enough to know that love was always love, anytime and anyplace, but it was more solid the closer it came to death. (pg. 345)