Carmelia Montiel, a twenty-year-old virgin, had just bathed in orange-blossom water and was strewing rosemary leaves on Pilar Ternera's bed when the shot rang out. Aureliano José had been destined to find with her the happiness that Amaranta had denied him, to have seven children, and to die in her arms of old age, but the bullet that entered his back and shattered his chest had been directed by a wrong interpretation of the cards.

Freedom is often the first casualty of war.

Just imagine, a cow on the balcony of the nation, what an awful thing, what a shitty country.

The only difference today between Liberals and Conservatives is that the Liberals go to mass at five o'clock and the Conservatives at eight.

The woman let out an expansive laugh that resounded through the house like a spray of broken glass.

Fernanda, on the other hand, looked for it in vain along the paths of her everyday itinerary without knowing that the search for lost things is hindered by routine habits and that is why it is so difficult to find them.

But that afternoon he asked himself, with his infinite capacity for illusion, if such pitiless indifference might not be a subterfuge for hiding the torments of love.