Everything that belonged to her husband made her weep again: his tasseled slippers, his pajamas under the pillow, the space of his absence in the dressing table mirror, his own odor on her skin. A vague thought made her shudder: "The people one loves should take all their things with them when they die.

In some way impossible to ascertain, after so many years of absense, Jose Arcadio was still an autumnal child, terribly sad and solitary.

Everything that goes into my mouth seems to make me fat, everything that comes out of my mouth embarrasses me.

He soon acquired the forlorn look that one sees in vegetarians.

Life in the world... was nothing more than a system of atavistic contracts, banal ceremonies, preordained words, with which people entertained each other in society in order not to commit murder. The dominant sign in that paradise of provincial frivolity was fear of the unknown.

The secret of a good old age is simply an honorable pact with solitude.

Love is not a condition of the spirit but a sign of the zodiac.