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

Please allow me to wipe the slate clean. Age has no reality except in the physical world. The essence of a human being is resistant to the passage of time. Our inner lives are eternal, which is to say that our spirits remain as youthful and vigorous as when we were in full bloom. Think of love as a state of grace, not the means to anything, but the alpha and omega. An end in itself. Florentino Ariza, Love in the Time of Cholera

She would say, "Someone should invent something to do with things you cannot use anymore but that you still cannot throw out.

If you lie down in a village square hoping to capture a sea gull, you could stay there your whole life without succeeding. But a hundred miles from shore it's different. Sea gulls have a highly developed instinct for self-preservation on land but at sea they're very cocky.

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".

The world is divided into those who screw and those who do not. He distrusted those who did not—when they strayed form the straight and narrow it was something so unusual for them that they bragged about love as if they had just invented it.

Never stop smiling not even when you're sad, someone might fall in love with your smile.