Great Throughts Treasury

"Eating without measure was always his only way to mourn, and had never seen it with such sorrow."

"Eleven years ago, the Chilean Pablo Neruda, one of the outstanding poets of our time, enlightened this audience with his word. Since then, the Europeans of good will - and sometimes those of bad, as well - have been struck, with ever greater force, by the unearthly tidings of Latin America, that boundless realm of haunted men and historic women, whose unending obstinacy blurs into legend. We have not had a moment's rest. A promethean president, entrenched in his burning palace, died fighting an entire army, alone; and two suspicious airplane accidents, yet to be explained, cut short the life of another great-hearted president and that of a democratic soldier who had revived the dignity of his people. There have been five wars and seventeen military coups; there emerged a diabolic dictator who is carrying out, in God's name, the first Latin American ethnocide of our time. In the meantime, twenty million Latin American children died before the age of one - more than have been born in Europe since 1970. Those missing because of repression number nearly one hundred and twenty thousand, which is as if no one could account for all the inhabitants of Uppsala. Numerous women arrested while pregnant have given birth in Argentine prisons, yet nobody knows the whereabouts and identity of their children who were furtively adopted or sent to an orphanage by order of the military authorities. Because they tried to change this state of things, nearly two hundred thousand men and women have died throughout the continent, and over one hundred thousand have lost their lives in three small and ill-fated countries of Central America: Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala. If this had happened in the United States, the corresponding figure would be that of one million six hundred thousand violent deaths in four years."

"Escaped the torments of memory with the aromatic fumes of gold cyanide."

"Each thing, just by looking at it, aroused in me an irresistible longing to write so I would not die. I had suffered this on other occasions, but only on that morning did I recognize it as a crisis of inspiration, that word, abominable but so real, that demolishes everything in its path in order to reach its ashes in time."

"Ethics imagine he said that doctors are to stick."

"Even when the winds of misfortune blow, amazing things can still happen."

"Even when I don't have to write, I arrange it every morning with the pointless rigor that has made me lose so many lovers."

"Eva is inside her cat."

"Even when he was watching without being seen, in these days of anxiety and he was waiting for a reply to his first letter, he saw transfigured in the reflection of early afternoon, under the fine rain of flowers almond, or whatever there was that time of the year it was still April."

"Every man is the master of his death, and the only thing that can be done when the time comes is to help him to death without fear or pain."

"Everyone says that death is a woman, continued the woman. She was stout, taller than her husband, and with a hairy wart on his upper lip. His speech recalled the electric fan hum. But I do not seem to be a woman, he said. She closed the closet and turned to see the eyes of the Colonel: I think it is a hoofed animal. Possibly, admitted the colonel. Sometimes strange things happen."

"Everyone is master of his own death."

"Everyone will have gone then except us, because we're tied to this soil by a roomful of trunks where the household goods and clothing of grandparents are kept, and the canopies that my parents' horses used when they came to Macondo, fleeing from the war. We've been sown into this soil by the memory of the remote dead whose bones can no longer be found twenty fathoms under the earth. The trunks have been in the room ever since the last days of the war; and they'll be there this afternoon when we come back from the burial, if that final wind hasn't passed, the one that will sweep away Macondo, its bedrooms full of lizards and its silent people devastated by memories."

"Everything that goes into my mouth seems to make me fat; everything that comes out of my mouth embarrasses me."

"Fame is very agreeable, but the bad thing is that it goes on 24 hours a day."

"Everything that belonged to her husband made her weep again: his tasseled slippers, his pajamas under the pillow, the space of his absence in the dressing table mirror, his own odor on her skin. A vague thought made her shudder: The people one loves should take all their things with them when they die."

"Fatality make us invisible."

"Faulkner is a writer who has had much to do with my soul, but Hemingway is the one who had the most to do with my craft - not simply for his books, but for his astounding knowledge of the aspect of craftsmanship in the science of writing."

"Farewell Letter: If God, for a second, forgot what I have become and granted me a little bit more of life, I would use it to the best of my ability. I wouldn’t, possibly, say everything that is in my mind, but I would be more thoughtful l of all I say. I would give merit to things not for what they are worth, but for what they mean to express. I would sleep little, I would dream more, because I know that for every minute that we close our eyes, we waste 60 seconds of light. I would walk while others stop; I would awake while others sleep. If God would give me a little bit more of life, I would dress in a simple manner, I would place myself in front of the sun, leaving not only my body, but my soul naked at its mercy. To all men, I would say how mistaken they are when they think that they stop falling in love when they grow old, without knowing that they grow old when they stop falling in love. I would give wings to children, but I would leave it to them to learn how to fly by themselves. To old people I would say that death doesn’t arrive when they grow old, but with forgetfulness. I have learned so much with you all, I have learned that everybody wants to live on top of the mountain, without knowing that true happiness is obtained in the journey taken & the form used to reach the top of the hill. I have learned that when a newborn baby holds, with its little hand, his father’s finger, it has trapped him for the rest of his life. I have learned that a man has the right and obligation to look down at another man, only when that man needs help to get up from the ground. Say always what you feel, not what you think. If I knew that today is the last time that that I am going to see you asleep, I would hug you with all my strength and I would pray to the Lord to let me be the guardian angel of your soul. If I knew that these are the last moments to see you, I would say “I love you.” There is always tomorrow, and life gives us another opportunity to do things right, but in case I am wrong, and today is all that is left to me, I would love to tell you how much I love you & that I will never forget you. Tomorrow is never guaranteed to anyone, young or old. Today could be the last time to see your loved ones, which is why you mustn’t wait; do it today, in case tomorrow never arrives. I am sure you will be sorry you wasted the opportunity today to give a smile, a hug, a kiss, and that you were too busy to grant them their last wish. Keep your loved ones near you; tell them in their ears and to their faces how much you need them and love them. Love them and treat them well; take your time to tell them “I am sorry,” “forgive me, “please,” “thank you,” and all those loving words you know. Nobody will know you for your secret thought. Ask the Lord for wisdom and strength to express them. Show your friends and loved ones how important they are to you. Send this letter to those you love. If you don’t do it today…tomorrow will be like yesterday, and if you never do it, it doesn’t matter either, the moment to do it is now. For you, with much love, Your Friend, Gabriel Garcia Marquez"

"Fernanda, on the other hand, looked for it in vain along the paths of her everyday itinerary without knowing that the search for lost things is hindered by routine habits and that is why it is so difficult to find them."

"Fermina Daza was not the only daughter both subject and bullied by his father, but the lady and mistress of an empire of dust and cobwebs that only force could put an invincible love standing."

"Fermina Daza was no longer the only daughter both submitted and tyrannized by his father, but the mistress and the lady of an empire of dust and cobwebs that force alone of an invincible love could call standing."

"Fiction has helped my journalism because it has given it literary value. Journalism has helped my fiction because it has kept me in a close relationship with reality."

"Fiction was invented the day Jonah arrived home and told his wife that he was three days late because he had been swallowed by a whale."

"Florentina Ariza had kept his answer ready for fifty-three years, seven months and eleven days and nights. 'Forever,' he said."

"Florentino Ariza was left with the nagging suspicion that this was not her last word. He believed that when a woman says no, she is waiting to be urged before making her final decision, but with her he could not risk making the same mistake twice."

"For an instant I thought about stopping the cab to say goodbye, but I preferred not to defy again a destiny as uncertain and persistent as mine."

"For a week I did not take off my mechanic's coverall day or night I did not bathe or shave or brush my teeth because love taught me too late that you groom yourself for someone you dress and perfume yourself for someone and I'd never had anyone to do that for."

"For every minute eyes closed, Khahym was suspended for sixty seconds of light."

"For Europeans, South America is a mustached man with a guitar and a gun."

"For me, the most important thing about the “Barranquilla Group" is that I had all sorts of books available. Because Alfonso Fuenmayor, Alvaro Cepeda, and Germán Vargas were there, and they were voracious readers. They had all the books. We'd get drunk until sunrise talking about literature, and one night there might be ten books I didn't know, but next day I had them. Germán would bring me two, Alfonso, three…"

"For at the height of pleasure he had experienced a revelation that he could not believe, that he even refused to admit, which was that his illusory love for Fermina Daza could be replaced by an earthly passion."

"For six hours examining all things, trying to find a difference from their appearance the previous day, struggling to discover themselves as small change that to reveal the passage of time."

"For they had lived together long enough to know that love was always love, anytime and anyplace, but it was more solid the closer it came to death."

"For years it seemed to me that this period had become a recurrent nightmare that I had almost every night, because I would wake in the morning feeling the same terror I had felt in the room with the saint. During my adolescence, when I was a student at an icy boarding school in the Andes, I would wake up crying in the middle of the night. I needed old age without remorse to understand that the misfortune of my grandparents in the house in Catasa was that they were always mired in their nostalgic memories, and the more they insisted on conjuring them, the deeper they sank."

"For the city, his city, stood unchanging on the edge of time: the same burning dry city of his nocturnal terrors and the solitary pleasures of puberty, where flowers rusted and salt corroded, where nothing had happened for four centuries except a slow aging among withered laurels and putrefying swamps. In winter sudden devastating downpours flooded the latrines and turned the streets into sickening bogs. In summer an invisible dust as harsh as red-hot chalk was blown into even the best-protected corners of the imagination by mad winds that took the roofs off the houses and carried away children through the air."

"From being used so much, kneaded with sweat and sighs, the air in the room had begun to turn to mud."

"Freedom is often the first casualty of war."

"From the first night of the moon, both hearts were shattered beginners a fierce love."

"From the moment I wrote 'Leaf Storm' I realized I wanted to be a writer and that nobody could stop me and that the only thing left for me to do was to try to be the best writer in the world."

"From the time they turned one they were tossed from the balconies of the kitchens, first with life preserves so they would lose their fear of the water, and then without life preservers so they would lose their respect for death."

"From that time on the parish priest began to show signs of senility that would lead him to say years later that the devil had probably won his rebellion against God, and that he was the one who sat on the heavenly throne, without revealing his true identity in order to trap the unwary."

"From then on I had her in my memory with so much clarity that I could do what I wanted with her. I changed the color of her eyes according to my state of mind: the color of water when she woke, the color of syrup when she laughed, the color of light when she was annoyed. I dressed her according to the age and condition that suited my changes of mood: a novice in love at twenty, a parlor whore at forty, the queen of Babylon at seventy, a saint at one hundred."

"From you I have learned so many things, but in truth they won't be of much use, for when I keep them within this suitcase, unhappily shall I be dying."

"Gabito isn't deceiving anyone, she said with an innocent smile, but sometimes it happens that even God needs to make weeks that are two years long."

"From then on I began to measure my life not by years but by decades."

"Gaston was not only a fierce lover, with endless wisdom and imagination, but he was also, perhaps, the first man in the history of the species who had made an emergency landing and had come close to killing himself and his sweetheart simply to make love in a field of violets."

"Get those bad thoughts out of your head, he told her. You're going to be happy."

"Give me a prejudice and I will move the world."

"Glasses, uniform and mysterious methods aroused the curiosity of hard to resist, but did not imagine never be curiosity is one of the many traps of love."