we had made love without love, half-dressed most of the time and always in the dark so we could imagine ourselves as better than we were.

He really had been through death, but he had returned because he could not bear the solitude.

Cease, cows, life is short.

And again, as always, after so many years we were still in the same place we always were.

Little by little, studying the infinite possibilities of a loss of memory, he realized that the day might come when things would be recognized by their inscriptions but that no one would remember their use.... At the beginning of the road into the swamp they put up a sign that said "Macondo" and another larger one on the main street that said "God exists".

Humanity, like armies in the field, advances at the speed of the slowest.

Just as real events are forgotten, some that never were can be in our memories as if they happened.