They were so close to each other that they preferred death to separation.

It's much more important to write than to be written about.

Ultimately, literature is nothing but carpentry. With both you are working with reality, a material just as hard as wood.

I never had intimate friends, and the few who came close are in New York. By which I mean they're dead, because that's where I suppose condemned souls go in order not to endure the truth of their past lives.

With her Florentino Ariza learned what he had already experienced many times without realizing it: that one can be in love with several people at the same time, feel the same sorrow with each, and not betray any of them. Alone in the midst of the crowd on the pier, he said to himself in a flash of anger: 'My heart has more rooms than a whorehouse.

Always remember that the most important thing in a good marriage is not happiness, but stability.

As a writer I'm merely a journalist who has learned to write better than others.