One Hundred Years of Solitude Quotes

“He soon acquired the forlorn look that one sees in vegetarians”
― Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

“Fernanda was scandalized that she did not understand the relationship of Catholicism with life but only its relationship with death, as if it were not a religion but a compendium of funeral conventions.”
― Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

“Let me soap you," he murmured.
"Thank you for your good intentions," she said, "but my two hands are quite enough."
"Even if it's just your back," the foreigner begged.
"That would be silly," she said. "People never soap their backs.”
― Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

“You can't come in, colonel," she told him. "You may be in command of your war, but I'm in command of my house.”
― Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

“Sitting in the wicker rocking chair with her interrupted work in her lap, Amaranta watched Aureliano José, his chin covered with foam, stropping his razor to give himself his first shave. His blackheads bled and he cut his upper lip as he tried to shape a mustache of blond fuzz, and when it was all over he looked the same as before, but the laborious process gave Amaranta the feeling that she had begun to grow old at that moment.”
― Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

“Arcadio had seen her many times working in her parents' small food store but he had never taken a good look at her because she had that rare virtue of never existing completely except at the opportune moment.”
― Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

“Colonel Aureliano Buendia smiled at her the same way as when he had first seen her with the bandage on that remote morning when he had come back to Macondo condemned to death.
"How awful," he said, "the way time passes!”
― Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

“Amaranta, en cambio, cuya dureza de corazón la espantaba, cuya concentrada amargura la amargaba, se le esclareció en el último examen como la mujer más tierna que había existido jamás, y comprendió con una lastimosa clarividencia que las injustas torturas a que había sometido a Pietro Crespi no eran dictadas por una voluntad de venganza, como todo el mundo creía, ni el lento martirio con que frustró la vida del coronel Gerinaldo Márquez había sido determinado por la mala hiel de su amargura, como todo el mundo creía, sino que ambas acciones habían sido una lucha a muerte entre un amor sin medidas y una cobardía invencible, y había triunfado finalmente el miedo irracional que Amaranta le tuvo siempre a su propio y atormentado corazón.”
― Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

“he connected the mechanism for the clock to a mechanical ballerina,and the toy danced uninterruptedly to the rhythm of her own music for three days.That discovery excited him so much more than any of his other hair-brained undertakings”
― Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

“تقبلها آنذاك لقدرها كان عميقاً إلى حد لا يقلقها معه اليقين بأن كل إمكانيات التصحيح باتت مغلقة”
― Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

“سوف نفني هنا , ونتحول إلى تراب في هذا البيت الذى لم يبق فيه رجال ولكننا لن ندع لهذه البلده النكده فرصه للشماته بنا ورؤيه دموعنا”
― Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

“When his father told him about his alarm at having forgotten even the most impressive happenings of his childhood, Aureliano explained his method to him […] with an inked brush he marked everything with its name: table, chair, clock, door, wall, bed, pan. He went to the corral and marked the animals and plants: cow, goat, pig, hen, cassava, caladium, banana. 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. Then he was more explicit. The sign that he hung on the neck of the cow was an exemplary proof of the way in which the inhabitants of Macondo were prepared to fight against loss of memory: "This is the cow. She must be milked every morning so that she will produce milk, and the milk must be boiled in order to be mixed with coffee to make coffee and milk." Thus they went on living in a reality that was slipping away, momentarily captured by words, but which would escape irremediably when they forgot the values of the written letters. (3.14)”
― Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

“No one understood why she had not died of hunger until the Indians, who were aware of everything, for they went ceaselessly about the house on their stealthy feet, discovered that Rebeca only liked to eat the damp earth of the courtyard and the cake of the whitewash that she picked off the walls with her nails.”
― Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

“Mondja meg neki – mosolyodott el az ezredes –, hogy az ember nem akkor hal meg, amikor szeret, hanem amikor lehet.”
― Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

“Ursula fu l’ultima della sfilata. La dignità del suo lutto, il peso del suo nome, la convincente veemenza della sua dichiarazione fecero vacillare per un attimo la bilancia della giustizia. “Voi avete preso molto sul serio questo gioco spaventoso, e avete fatto bene, perché state facendo il vostro dovere” disse ai membri del tribunale. “Ma non dimenticate che finché Dio ci dà vita, noi continueremo a essere madri, e che, rivoluzionari o no, abbiamo il diritto di tirarvi giù i pantaloni e prendervi a sculacciate alla prima mancanza di rispetto.”
― Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

“lianas sangrantes y salamandras doradas”
― Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

“İnsanın oturduğu toprakların altında ölüleri yoksa, o adam o toprağın insanı değildir.”
― Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

“At twelve o’clock, when Aureli-ano, José had bled to death and Carmelita Montiel found that the cards showing her future were blank, more than four hundred men had filed past the theater and discharged their revolvers into the abandoned body of Captain Aquiles Ricardo. A patrol had to use a wheelbarrow to carry the body, which was heavy with lead and fell apart like a water-soaked loaf of bread.”
― Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

“Не се тревожи - усмихваше се той.- Да умреш е много по-трудно, отколкото човек си мисли.
В неговия случай бе вярно. Увереността, че денят му е насрочен, го облече в загадъчна неприкосновеност, в безсмъртие до определен срок, което го направи неуязвим за опасностите на войната и му позволи накрая да извоюва едно поражение, много по-трудно, много по-кърваво и скъпо, отколкото победата.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

“But when she saw her eating with her hands, incapable of giving an answer that was not a miracle of simple-mindedness, the only thing that she lamented was the fact that the idiots in the family lived so long.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

“Sadeliğin üstünlüğünü, ayrıcalığını anlayabilmesi için otuz iki savaş çıkarması, ölümle bütün anlaşmalarını bozması, ün denilen pisliğe bir domuz gibi bulanması ve tam kırk yıl yitirmesi gerekmişti.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

“„Може би Бог иска да срещнеш много неподходящи хора, преди да срещнеш подходящия, затова когато това се случи, бъди благодарен”
― Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

“لأن من طبع الرجال ازدراء الجوع بعد إشباع شهيتهم”
― غابرييل غارسيا ماركيز, مئة عام من العزلة

“Upset by two nostalgias facing each other like two mirrors,”
― Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

“The innocent yellow train that was to bring so many ambiguities and certainties, so many pleasant and unpleasant moments, so many changes, calamities, and feelings of nostalgia to Macondo.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

“confusedly aware that he was doing something that for a very long time he had wanted to do but that he had imagined could really never be done, not knowing what he was doing because he did not know where his feet were or where his head was, or whose feet or whose head, and feeling that he could no longer resist the glacial rumbling of his kidneys and the air of his intestines, and fear, and the bewildered anxiety to flee and at the same time stay forever in that exasperated silence and that fearful solitude.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

“She went back to eating earth. The first time she did it almost out of curiosity, sure that the bad taste would be the best cure for the temptation. And, in fact, she could not bear the earth in her mouth. But she persevered, overcome by the growing anxiety, and little by little she was getting back her ancestral appetite, the taste of primary minerals, the unbridled satisfaction of what was the original food.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

“He felt himself forgotten, not with the irremediable forgetfulness of the heart, but with a different kind of forgetfulness, which was more cruel and irrevocable and which he knew very well because it was the forgetfulness of death.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

“Gerilimden sarhoşa dönen, sessizliğin mucizevi derinliğinden etkilenen ve ölüm tutkusuyla kenetlenmiş kalabalığı hiçbir şeyin yerinden kıpırdatamayacağına inanan Jose Arcadio Segundo, ayaklarının ucuna basarak, başını önündekilerden daha yukarı kaldırdı ve ömründe ilk kez sesini yükseltti:
-Sizi gidi hergeleler! diye bağırdı.
-Verdiğiniz o bir dakikayı alın da kıçınıza sokun!

Onun bağırmasından sonra olanlar kimseyi korkutmadı. Herkes hayal gördüğünü sandı. Yüzbaşı ateş emri verdi ve on dört makineli tüfek o anda emri yerine getirdi. Ama bütün bunlar gülünç bir oyun gibi görünüyordu. Sanki makineli tüfeklere boş kapsül doldurulmuş gibiydi. Çünkü tüfeklerin tarrakası duyulduğu ve ardı kesilmeden kurşun tükürdüğü görüldüğü halde, kalabalıkta en ufak bir tepki yoktu. Bir anda taş kesilmiş gibi duran kalabalıktan ne bir ses, ne bir soluk duyuluyordu. Birden istasyon tarafından yükselen bir ölüm çığlığı büyüyü bozdu. Duyulan, Aaah, anacığım, avazesi yeri göğü titreten bir ses, volkanik bir soluk, dünyalar değiştiren bir kükreme olup bomba gibi patladı kalabalığın ortasında. Panik içinde bir anda kaynaşan kalabalık, kadınla kucağındaki çocuğu yutup sürüklerken, Jose Arcadio Segundo, ancak öteki çocuğu yakalamaya fırsat bulabildi. Yıllarca sonra o çocuk, kendisini bunak bir ihtiyar yerine koymalarına aldırmaksızın o günü anlatacak, Jose Arcadio Segundo'nun kendisini nasıl havaya kaldırdığını, kalabalığın dehşeti üzerinden yüzercesine geçirerek yakındaki bir sokağa nasıl götürdüğünü ballandıra ballandıra anlatacaktı. Çocuk, herkesten yukarıda olduğu için, o anda alandaki çılgına dönmüş kitlenin köşeye doğru koşuştuğunu ve makinelilerin ateş açtığını görebilmiş, aynı anda birkaç kişinin birden, -Yere yatın! Yere yatın! diye bağırdıklarını duyabilmişti.

Öndekiler, ilk kurşun dalgasıyla taranmış ve yere yıkılmışlardı bile. Sağ kalanlar yere yatacakları yerde ufak alana çekilmeye çalıştılar. Ne var ki, karşı sokaktaki makineliler de yaylım ateşine başlamışlardı. İki ateş arasında sıkışan kalabalık, iki yöne atılan bir ejder kuyruğuna benziyordu. Kitle devasa bir girdap gibi dönmeye başladı. Hiç kesilmeyen makinelilerin ateşiyle kat kat soyulan soğan gibi ortaya doğru azalıyorlardı. Çocuk, açıkta diz çökmüş bir kadının, gizemli bir güçle kurşunlardan korunarak, kollarını haç biçiminde tuttuğunu gördü. Jose Arcadio Segundo yüzü kana bulanarak yere yıkıldığı anda, çocuğu oraya bıraktı. Hemen sonra da büyük kalabalık, o boşluğu, diz çöken kadını, kurak gökyüzündeki ışığı, Ursula Iguara'nın yığın yığın hayvan biçiminde şekerleme sattığı bu orospu dünyayı örtüverdi.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

“لقد وجد نفسه مضطراً إلي إشعال نيران اثنتين وثلاثين حرباً, واضطر إلي خرق كل عهوده مع الموت, والتمرغ كخنزير في مزبلة المجد, كي يكتشف, بتأخير يقارب الأربعين عاماً, امتيازات البساطة.”
― غابرييل غارسيا ماركيز, مئة عام من العزلة