Each man is master of his own death, and all that we can do when the time comes is to help him die without fear of pain.

Many years later, in front of the firing squad, colonel Aureliano Buendía would remember that distant afternoon his father took him to see ice.

Inspiration gives no warnings.

It is impossible to explain. But what I like most is to eat.

Morality, too, is a question of time.

One of the most difficult things is the first paragraph. I have spent many months on a first paragraph, and once I get it, the rest just comes out very easily.

Thus they went on living in a reality that was slipping away, momentarily captured by words, but which would escape irremediably when they forgot the values of the written letters.