he dared to explore her withered neck w/his fingertips…her hips w/their decaying bones, her thighs with their aging veins.

Nobody teaches life anything.

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".

I plead youth as a mitigating circumstance.

You have to have spent the night at sea, sitting in a life raft and looking at your watch, to know that the night is immeasurably longer than the day.

An artisan without memories, whose only dream was to die of fatigue in the oblivion and misery of his little gold fishes.

In journalism just one fact that is false prejudices the entire work. In contrast, in fiction one single fact that is true gives legitimacy to the entire work. That's the only difference, and it lies in the commitment of the writer. A novelist can do anything he wants so long as he makes people believe in it.