And nevertheless, when they watched him leave the house, this man they themselves had urged to conquer the world, then they were the ones left with the terror that he would never return. That was their life. Love, if it existed, was something separate: another life.

She had never imagined that curiosty was one of the many masks of 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.

I would give wings to children, but I would leave it to them to learn how to fly by themselves.

Life had already given him sufficient reasons for knowing that no defeat was the final one.

Justice limps along, but gets there all the same.

It was also her nature that caused her letters to avoid emotional pitfalls and confine themselves to relating the events of her daily life in the utilitarian style of a ship's log. In reality they were distracted letters, intended to keep the coals alive without putting her hand in the fire, while Florentino Ariza burned himself alive in every line.