races condemned to 100 years of solitude did not have a second opportunity on earth.

In her final years she would still recall the trip that, with the perverse lucidity of nostalgia, became more and more recent in her memory.

She knew that it would not be easy to submit to his miserliness, or the foolishness of his premature appearance of age, or his maniacal sense of order, or his eagerness to as for everything and give nothing at all in return, but despite all this, no man was better company because no other man in the world was so in need of love.

The only thing he could do to stay alive was not to allow himself the anguish of that memory. He erased it from his mind, although from time to time in the years that were left to him he would feel it revive, with no warning and for no reason, like the sudden pang of an old scar.

Just because someone does not love you as you want, it does not mean that you do not love with all his being.

The truth is I'm getting old, I said. We already are old, she said with a sigh. What happens is that you don't feel it on the inside, but from the outside everybody can see it.

When one reaches absolute power, one loses total contact with reality.