and it was always without pretensions of loving or being loved although always in the hope of finding something that resembled love but without the problems of love.

In the plenitude of their relationship, Florentina Ariza asked himself which of the two was love: the turbulent bed or the peaceful Sunday afternoons, and Sara Noriega calmed him with the simple argument that love was everything they did naked. She said, 'Spiritual love from the waist up and physical love from the waist down.

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.

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.

I have learned that a man has the right and obligation to look down at another man, only when that man needs help to get up from the ground.

She would defend herself, saying that love, no matter what else it might be, was a natural talent. She would say: You are either born knowing how, or you never know.

He repeated until his dying day that there was no one with more common sense, no stonecutter more obstinate, no manager more lucid or dangerous, than a poet.