Colombian author quotes Quotes

“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.”

“Amputees suffer pains, cramps, itches in the leg that is no longer there. That is how she felt without him, feeling his presence where he no longer was.”

“She felt so old, so worn out, so far away from the best moments of her life that she even yearned for those that she remembered as the worst… Her heart of compressed ash, which had resisted the most telling blows of daily reality without strain, fell apart with the first waves of nostalgia. The need to feel sad was becoming a vice as the years eroded her. She became human in her solitude.”

“There is no greater glory than to die for love.”

“Taught him the only thing he had to learn about love: that nobody teaches life anything.”

“No matter what, nobody can take away the dances you've already had.”

“Between the covers of the books that no one had ever read again, in the old parchments damaged by dampness, a livid flower had prospered, and in the air that had been the purest and brightest in the house an unbearable smell of rotten memories floated.”

“Tricks you need to transform something which appears fantastic, unbelievable into something plausible, credible, those I learned from journalism. The key is to tell it straight. It is done by reporters and by country folk.”

“When you have a healthy appetite there is no such thing as bad bread.”

“...they enjoyed the miracle of loving each other as much at the table as in bed, and they grew to be so happy that even when they were two worn-out old people they kept on blooming like children and playing together like dogs.”

“The only thing worse than bad health is a bad name.”

“Thus they went on living in a reality that was slipping away, momentarily captured by words, but which would escape irremediably when they forgot the values of the written letters.”

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

“It is impossible to explain. But what I like most is to eat.”

“To all, I would say how mistaken they are when they think that they stop falling in love when they grow old, without knowing that they grow old when they stop falling in love...”

“opened the door a crack wide enough for the entire world to pass through .”

“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.”

“Children's lies are signs of great talent.”

“A man should have two wives: one to love and one to sew on his buttons.”

“From the moment I wrote 'Leaf Storm' I realized I wanted to be a writer and that nobody could stop me and that the only thing left for me to do was to try to be the best writer in the world.”

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

“his examination revealed that he had no fever, no pain anywhere, and that his only concrete feeling was an urgent desire to die. All that was needed was shrewd questioning...to conclude once again that the symptoms of love were the same as those of cholera.”

“The people of the United States are one of the people I most admire in the world. The only thing I don't understand is why a country that manages to do so well cannot do better in choosing its president.”

“She would say, "Someone should invent something to do with things you cannot use anymore but that you still cannot throw out.”

“When I sit down to write, which is the essential moment in my life, I am completely alone. Whenever I write a book, I accumulate a lot of documentation. That background material is the most intimate part of my private life. It's a little embarrassing - like being seen in your underwear It's like the way magicians never tell others how they make a dove come out of a hat.”

“The rain would not have bothered Fernanda, after all, her whole life had been spent as if it were raining.”

“Together they had overcome the daily incomprehension, the instantaneous hatred, the reciprocal nastiness, and fabulous flashes of glory in the conjugal conspiracy. It was time when they both loved each other best, without hurry or excess, when both were most conscious of and grateful for their incredible victories over adversity. Life would still present them with other moral trials, of course, but that no longer mattered: they were on the other shore.”

“Everything that belonged to her husband made her weep again: his tasseled slippers, his pajamas under the pillow, the space of his absence in the dressing table mirror, his own odor on her skin. A vague thought made her shudder: "The people one loves should take all their things with them when they die.”

“In the end all books are written for your friends.”

“Although some men who were easy with their words said that it was worth sacrificing one’s life for a night of love with such an arousing woman, the truth was that no one made any effort to do so. Perhaps, not only to attain her but also to conjure away her dangers, all that was needed was a feeling as primitive and as simple as that of love, but that was the only thing that did not occur to anyone.”

“Life is but a continual succession of opportunities for surviving.”

“I became aware that the invincible power that has moved the world is unrequited, not happy, love.”

“He would wake for no reason in the middle of the night, and the memory of the self-absorbed love was revealed to him for what it was: a pitfall of happiness that he despised and desired at the same time, but from which it was impossible to escape.”

“She was a ghost in a strange house that overnight had become immense and solitary and through which she wandered without purpose, asking herself in anguish which one of them was deader: the man who had died or the woman he had left behind.”

“I do not believe there is a method better than Montessori for making children sensitive to the beauties of the world and awakening their curiosity regarding the secrets of life.”

“The only everyday and eternal reality was love.”

“Florentina Ariza had kept his answer ready for fifty-three years, seven months and eleven days and nights. 'Forever,' he said.”

“She searched the truth with an anguish almost as great as her terrible fear of finding it .”

“Don't struggle so much, the best things happen when not expected.”

“It's much more important to write than to be written about.”

“The only difference today between Liberals and Conservatives is that the Liberals go to mass at five o'clock and the Conservatives at eight.”

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

“She discovered with great delight that one does not love one's children just because they are one's children but because of the friendship formed while raising them.”

“I discovered the miracle that all things that sound are music, including the dishes and silverware in the dishwasher, as long as they fulfill the illusion of showing us where life is heading.”

“The weak would never enter the kingdom of love.”

“Over the years they both reached the same wise conclusion by different paths: it was not possible to live together in any other way, or love in any other way, and nothing in this world was more difficult than love.”

“Fame is very agreeable, but the bad thing is that it goes on 24 hours a day.”

“The fact is that being seductive is an addiction that can never be satisfied.”

“She had the revelation one Sunday that while the other instruments played for everyone the violen played for her alone .”

“The woman let out an expansive laugh that resounded through the house like a spray of broken glass.”