For a week I did not take off my mechanic's coverall day or night I did not bathe or shave or brush my teeth because love taught me too late that you groom yourself for someone you dress and perfume yourself for someone and I'd never had anyone to do that for.

[The captain] looked at Florentino Ariza, his invincible power, his intrepid love and was overwhelmed by the belated suspicion that it is life, more than death, that has no limits.

She would not shed a tear, she would not waste the rest of her years simmering in the maggot broth of memory.

The truth is I'm getting old, I said. We already are old, she said with a sigh. What happens is that you don't feel it on the inside, but from the outside everybody can see it.

He always considered death an unavoidable professional hazard.

If you're going to be a writer you have to be one of the great ones... After all, there are better ways to starve to death.

A famous writer who wants to continue writing has to be constantly defending himself against fame.