One Hundred Years of Solitude Quotes

“but he only found her in the image that saturated his private and terrible solitude.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

“Upset by two nostalgias facing each other like two mirrors, he lost his marvelous sense of unreality and he ended up recommending to all of them that they leave Macondo, that they forget everything he had taught them about the world and the human heart, that they shit on Horace, and that wherever they might be they always remember that the past was a lie, that memory has no return, that every spring gone by could never be recovered, and that the wildest and most tenacious love was an ephemeral truth in the end.”
― Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

“More than mother and son, they were accomplices in solitude.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

“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.... At the beginning of the road into the swamp they put up a sign that said "Macondo" and another larger one on the main street that said "God exists".”
― Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

“A short time later, when the carpenter was taking measurements for the coffin, through the window they saw a light rain of tiny yellow flowers falling. They fell on the town all through the night in a silent storm, and they covered the roofs and blocked the doors and smothered the animals who slept outdoors. So many flowers fell from the sky that in the morning the streets were carpeted with a compact cushion and they had to clear them away with shovels and rakes so that the funeral procession could pass by.”
― Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

“قولي له : إن الإنسان لا يموت عندما يريد ، بل يموت عندما يستطيع .”
― Gabriel García Márquez, مائة عام من العزلة

“Around the time they were preparing Jose Arcadio for the seminary she had already made a detailed recapitulation of life in the house since the founding of Macondo and had completely changed the opinion that she had always had of its descendants. She realized that Colonel Aureliano Buendia had not lost his love for the family because he had been hardened by the war, as she had thought before, but that he had never loved anyone... Amaranta, however, whose hardness of heart frightened her, whose concentrated bitterness made her bitter, suddenly became clear to her in the final analysis as the most tender woman who had ever existed, and she understood with pitying clarity that the unjust tortures to which she had submitted Pietro Crespi had not been dictated by a desire for vengeance, as everyone had thought, nor had the slow martyrdom with which she had frustrated the life of Colonel Gerineldo Marquez been determined by the gall of her bitterness, as everyone had thought, but that both actions had been a mortal struggle between a measureless love and an invincible cowardice, and that the irrational fear that Amaranta had always had of her own tormented heart had triumphed in the end. It was during that time that Ursula began to speak Rebeca's name, bringing back the memory of her with an old love that was exalted by tardy repentance and a sudden admiration, coming to understand that only she, Rebeca , the one who had never fed of her milk but only of the earth of the land and the whiteness of the walls... Rebeca, the one with an impatient heart, the one with a fierce womb, was the only one who had the unbridled courage that Ursula had wanted for her line.”
― Gabriel Garcia Marquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

“ومع ذلك، وقبل أن يصل إلى بيت الشعر الأخير، كان قد أدرك أنه لن يخرج ابداً من هذه الغرفة، لأنه مقدر لمدينة المرايا (أو السراب) أن تذروها الرياح، وتُنفى من ذاكرة البشر، في اللحظة التي ينتهي فيها أوريليانو بوينديا من حل رموز الرقاق، وأن كل ما هو مكتوب فيها لا يمكن أن يتكرر، منذ الأزل إلى الأبد، لأن السلالات المحكومة بمئة عام من العزلة، ليست لها فرصة أخرى على الأرض”
― جابرييل جارسيا ماركيز, One Hundred Years of Solitude

“¡Carajo! -gritó.
Amaranta, que empezaba a meter la ropa en el baúl, creyó que la había picado un alacrán.
-¡Dónde está! -preguntó alarmada.
-¿Qué?
-¡El animal! -aclaró Amaranta.
Úrsula se puso un dedo en el corazón.
-Aquí -dijo.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

“Amaranta, however, whose hardness of heart frightened her, whose concentrated bitterness made her bitter, suddenly became clear to her in the final analysis as the most tender woman who had ever existed, and she understood with pitying clarity that the unjust tortures to which she had submitted Pietro Crespi had not been dictated by a desire for vengeance, as everyone had thought, nor had the slow martyrdom with which she had frustrated the life of Colonel Gerineldo Márquez been determined by the gall of her bitterness, as everyone had thought, but that both actions had been a mortal struggle between a measureless love and an invincible cowardice, and that the irrational fear that Amaranta had always had of her own tormented heart had triumphed in the end.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

“Human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mother gives birth to them, but that life obliges them over and over again to give birth to themselves.”
― Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

“بدأ يدرك كم يحب فى الواقع الأشخاص الذين كرههم أكثر من سواهم .”
― غابرييل غارسيا ماركيز, One Hundred Years of Solitude

“Era lo último que iba quedando de un pasado cuyo aniquilamiento no se consumaba, porque seguía aniquilándose indefinidamente, consumiéndose dentro de sí mismo, acabándose a cada minuto pero sin acabar de acabarse jamás.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

“I plead youth as a mitigating circumstance.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

“It had never occurred to him until then to think that literature was the best plaything that had ever been invented to make fun of people...”
― Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

“العالم سيتخوزق عندما يسافر البشر فى عربة الدرجة الاولى و الادب فى عربة الشحن”
― Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

“Aureliano not only understood by then, he also lived
his brother’s experiences as something of his own, for on one occasion when the latter was
explaining in great detail the mechanism of love, he interrupted him to ask: “What does it feel
like?” José Arcadio gave an immediate reply:

“It’s like an earthquake.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

“Muchos años después, frente al pelotón de fusilamiento, el coronel Aureliano Buendía había de recordar aquella tarde remota en que su padre lo llevó a conocer el hielo.”
― Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

“من الأفضل ألا ننام , لأن الحياة ستصبح أكثر عطاء”
― Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

“And normality was precisely the most fearful part of that infinite war: nothing ever happened.”
― Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

“Apártense, vacas, que la vida es corta.”
― Gabriel Gárcia Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

“Ella encontró siempre la manera de rechazarlo porque aunque no conseguía quererlo, ya no podía vivir sin el.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, Cien años de soledad

“... that the past is one lie, and the memory has no returning, becouse every old spring is beyond retrieve, and even the craziest and most persistent love is just a temporary truth...”
― Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

“«El mundo habrá acabado de joderse —dijo entonces— el día en que los hombres viajen en primera clase y la literatura en el vagón de carga.»”
― Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez, Cien años de soledad

“Había aprendido a pensar en frío, para que los recuerdos ineludibles no le lastimaran ningún sentimiento.”
― Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez, Cien años de soledad

“La necesidad de sentirse triste se le iba convirtiendo en un vicio a medida que le devastaban los años.”
― Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

“Science has eliminated distance,” Melquíades proclaimed. “In a short time, man will be able to see what is happening in any place in the world without leaving his own house.”
― Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

“She asked God, without fear, if he really believed that people were made of iron in order to bear so many troubles and mortifications; and asking over and over she was stirring up her own confusion and she felt irrepressible desires to let herself go and scamper about like a foreigner and allow herself at last an instant of rebellion, that instant yearned for so many times and so many times postponed, putting her resignation aside and shitting on everything once and for all and drawing out of her heart the infinite stacks of bad words that she had been forced to swallow over a century of conformity.”
― Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

“In that way the long-awaited visit, for which both had prepared questions and had even anticipated answers, was once more the usual everyday conversation.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

“But what worries me is not your shooting me, because after all, for people like us it's a natural death." He laid his glasses on the bed and took off his watch and chain. "What worries me," he went on, "is that out of so much hatred for the military, out of fighting them so much and thinking about them so much, you've ended up as bad as they are. And no ideal in life is worth that much baseness.”
― Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude