She was considered timid and morose. Only in the country, her skin tanned by the sun and her belly full of ripe fruit, running through the fields with Pedro Tercero, was she smiling and happy. Her mother said that that was the real Blanca, and that the other one, the one back in the city, was a Blanca in hibernation.

Youth is not a period in life but a state of mind.

At my age, people prefer to stay in a relationship that is not working. I do not understand that. I think it takes a lot of courage to separate. But it takes more energy to stay in something that is not working.

This is to assuage our conscience, darling" she would explain to Blanca. "But it doesn't help the poor. They don't need chartiy; they need justice.

As my Popo used to say, life is a tapestry we weave day by day with threads of different colors, some heavy and dark, others thin and bright, all the threads having their uses. The stupid things I did are already in the tapestry, indelible, but I’m not going to be weighed down by them till I die. What’s done is done; I have to look ahead.

The first lie of fiction is that the author gives some order to the chaos of life: chronological order, or whatever order the author chooses.

You would give your life for your little baby. It's not the same when you are in a sexual relationship unless you feel that you are loved as you love.