Gabriel García Márquez · 120 pages
Rating: (89.7K votes)
“He always considered death an unavoidable professional hazard.”
“When I wake up," he said, "remind me that I'm going to marry her.”
“They looked like two children," she told me. And that thought frightened her, because she'd always felt that only children are capable of everything.”
“He was healthier than the rest of us, but when you listened with the stethoscope you could hear the tears bubbling inside his heart.”
“There had never been a death so foretold.”
“A falcon who chases a warlike crane can only hope for a life of pain.”
“Tenía una manera de hablar que más bien le servía para ocultar que para decir.”
“Halfway through one August day, while she was embroidering with her friends, she heard someone coming to the door. She didn't have to look to see who it was. "He was fat and was beginning to lose his hair, and he already needed glasses to see things close by," she told me. "But it was him, God damn it, it was him!”
“She was certain that the Vicario brothers were not as eager to carry out the sentence as to find someone who would do them the favor of stopping them.”
“They’re perfect,” she was frequently heard to say. “Any man will be happy with them because they’ve been raised to suffer.”
“He was carrying a suitcase with clothing in order to stay and another just like it with almost two thousand letters that she had written him. They were arranged by date in bundles ties with colored ribbons, and they were all unopened.”
“The truth is that she spoke about her misfortune without any shame in order to cover up the other misfortune, the real one, that was burning in her insides.”
“ولم يكن ليستوعب، بصورة خاصة، كيف يمكن للحياة أن تستفيد من مصادفات كثيرة محظورة على الأدب، لتتم دون أي عرقلة عملية موت معلنة إلى ذلك الحد.”
“Anda, niña- le dijo temblando de rabia-: dinos quién fue.
Ella se demoró apenas el tiempo necesario para decir el nombre. Lo buscó en las tinieblas, lo encontró a primera vista entre los tantos y tantos nombres confundibles de este mundo y del otro, y lo dejó clavado en la pared con su dardo certero, como a una mariposa sin albedrío cuya sentencia estaba escrita para siempre.
-Santiago Nasar- le dijo.”
“Había nacido como las grandes reinas de la historia con el cordón umbilical enrollado en el cuello.”
“Son perfectas -le oía decir con frecuencia-. Cualquier hombre será feliz con ellas, porque han sido criadas para sufir.”
“On the morning that they were going to kill him, Santiago Nasar got up at five-thirty in the morning to wait for the boat bishop was coming on.”
“Es que murió sin entender su muerte.”
“اللعنة! لا يمكنك أن تتصور كم هو شاق قتل إنسان!" هكذا قال بابلو فيكاريو”
“The only thing that didn't occur to her was to give up. Nevertheless, he seemed insensible to her
delirium; it was like writing to nobody.”
“Then they both kept on knifing him against the door with alternate and easy stabs, floating in the dazzling backwater they had found on the other side of fear.”
“Bana bir ön yargı verin, dünyayı yerinden oynatayım.”
“«Parecían dos niños», me dijo. Y esa reflexión la asustó, pues siempre había pensado que sólo los niños son capaces de todo.”
“...I caught the smell of a warm woman and I saw the eyes of an insomniac leopard in the darkness...”
“الشرف هو الحب" , هكذا كنت أسمع أمي تقول”
“Cuando despierte - dijo- , recuérdame que me voy a casar con ella !”
“So easy now that Elder Sister has explained to her what all young girls in houses are taught—that with care and meticulous acting and tears of pretended pain and fear, and the final modest telltale stains cautiously placed, a girl can, if necessary, be virgin ten times for ten different men.”
“Well, he’d actually never heard anybody say it. But he felt that it should be true. There”
“I knew what they were doing - or more like not doing. Leaving. I shook my head. "You guys are idiots."
Link grinned. "I'd have gone with 'brave as hell,' myself.”
“Sometimes you need a little crisis to get your adrenaline flowing and help you realize your potential.”
“You promised to be on your best behavior,” I reminded him, breathless.
“You kissed me,” he growled. His voice had gone very deep.
“Well, but you started it by kissing my neck.”
“True. I hadn't planned that.” His sultry voice, paired with those blazing eyes, told me I needed to get away from him. I hurried to the end of the bed, where I jumped off and began to pace back and forth, yanking out my loose hairband and pulling my hair back into a tight ponytail. I tried hard not to think about the taste of his lips. I'd had my first kiss, and I'd never be the same.
“Why did you stop?” he asked.
“Because you were moving on to other things.”
He scratched his chin and cheek. “Hmm, moved too quickly. Rookie mistake.”
I crossed my arms again, watching him speculate internally like a coach outlining a play that had gone wrong. Incredible. Then he sized me up in his sights again.
“But I can see you still want me.”
I gave him my meanest stare, but it was hard to look at him. Gosh, he was hot! And a total player. The kiss meant nothing to him.
“Oh,” he said with mock sadness, “there it goes. Mad instead? Well, sort of. You can't seem to muster a really good anger—”
“Stop it!”
“Sorry, was I saying that out loud?”
“I can read people, too, you know. Well, not you, but at least I have the decency to try not to notice, to give them some sort of emotional privacy!”
“Yes, how very decent of you.” He hadn't moved from his languid position on my bed.
I leaned forward, grabbing a pillow and throwing it at him.
“Pillow fight?” He raised an eyebrow.
“Get off my bed. Please. I'm ready to go to sleep.”
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