One Hundred Years of Solitude

"Fortune did not smile on Aureliano Segundo's efforts."

"The banana company brought strange customs and stranger people."

"He had the look of someone who has been in solitude too long."

"A person does not belong to a place until someone in that place is dead."

"The ice that Melquiades had brought to Macondo seemed eternal."

"Remedios the Beauty had found a way to ascend."

"Love was an unknown passion that had not yet entered the world."

"There should be someone to put your affairs in order."

"The secret of good health is to eat light and leave the table while still hungry."

"They were covered with a tender, transparent skin, as if they were newborns."

"Everything written on these parchments was foreordained."

"One can bear any sorrow without pity."

"Memory does not know how to distinguish between the truth and the invented."

"She had never known beauty until she understood solitude."

"In his mind he made a quick calculation of the digit possibilities."

"Maturity is a bitter disappointment."

"The past was like a living thing, solid and unmovable."

"Nothing that happens in life is lost."

"They really had been through death, but they had returned."

"Wars are good business."

"She had discovered that it was impossible to love the same person twice."

"The secret of a good old age is simply an honorable pact with solitude."

"One must accept one's life as a gift, whatever form it takes."

"He is still in all his splendor, still in all his power, and still able to destroy me."

"The world is small and paths that cross will cross again."

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

"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."