An ash-gray dog with a white blaze on its forehead burst onto the rough terrain of the market on the first Sunday in December, knocked down tables of fried food, overturned Indians' stalls and lottery kiosks, and bit four people who happened to cross its path.

It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love.

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

Jose Palacios, his oldest servant, found him floating naked with his eyes open in the purifying waters of his bath and thought he had drowned.

Over the weekend the vultures got into the presidential palace by pecking through the screens on the balcony windows and the flapping of their wings stirred up the stagnant time inside, and at dawn on Monday the city awoke out of its lethargy of centuries with the warm, soft breeze of a great man dead and rotting grandeur.

Tell him,' the colonel said, smiling, 'that a person doesn’t die when he should but when he can.

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