Gabriel García Márquez (Narrator)

"He would not yield to this solitude"

"In any case, she had never experienced the need to lie"

"Time had become visible"

"Wars were not, as the mothers of the world were told, a consequence of an impulse toward the destruction of things"

"They had allowed themselves to be seduced by prosperity and then abused by solitude"

"She had never felt anything like the anxiety to know who she really was"

"He discovered that he was not capable of love"

"The world was so recent that many things lacked names"

"It was as if everything would remain in eternal suspension"

"She accepted him with the satisfaction of correcting the past"

"They were defeated by their own destructive drives"

"The persistence of his struggle was more a matter of habit than hope"

"It was as if God had decided to put to the test every capacity for surprise and was keeping the inhabitants of Macondo in a permanent alternation between doubt and revelation."

"He really had been through death, but he had returned because he could not bear the solitude."

"The only thing that mattered was that he was alive, that he could still dream."

"She had discovered that it was impossible to love two men at the same time, but also impossible to love only one."

"He really did look like a madman, but he was not mad."

"The past was not what had happened, but what one recalled."

"They were never again to recover the jasmine smell that Mrs. Iguarán had brought to the house."

"No matter the overwhelmingly profound convictions one might have, there is always something in the human heart that suggests even the most iron-clad decision is reversible."

"She would await him without rancor, without bitterness, with an unconditional surrender that resembled that of the fish to water."

"He was still thinking about it as if dreaming, even when awake."

"It was as if the laws of nature had been revoked."

"She understood then that all human effort is useless against the indifference of heaven."

"He had survived hell itself, only to discover purgatory was far worse."

"She loved him with an intensity that defied explanation."

"The truly magical thing about Macondo was that nothing was impossible there."

"He pursued her with the dedication of someone seeking redemption."

"War teaches nothing except the multiplicity of its own futility."

"The manuscripts contained the entire history of Macondo, written as if it had not yet happened."