Quotes from Memories of My Melancholy Whores

“I discovered that my obsession for having each thing in the right place, each subject at the right time, each word in the right style, was not the well-deserved reward of an ordered mind but just the opposite: a complete system of pretense invented by me to hide the disorder of my nature. I discovered that I am not disciplined out of virtue but as a reaction to my negligence, that I appear generous in order to conceal my meanness, that I pass myself off as prudent because I am evil-minded, that I am conciliatory in order not to succumb to my repressed rage, that I am punctual only to hide how little I care about other people’s time. I learned, in short, that love is not a condition of the spirit but a sign of the zodiac.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, quote from Memories of My Melancholy Whores

“No matter what, nobody can take away the dances you've already had.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, quote from Memories of My Melancholy Whores

“The adolescents of my generation, greedy for life, forgot in body and soul about their hopes for the future until reality taught them that tomorrow was not what they had dreamed, and they discovered nostalgia.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, quote from Memories of My Melancholy Whores

“Age isn't how old you are but how old you feel.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, quote from Memories of My Melancholy Whores

“I would not have traded the delights of my suffering for anything in the world.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, quote from Memories of My Melancholy Whores

“Morality, too, is a question of time.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, quote from Memories of My Melancholy Whores

“No matter what you do this year or in the next hundred, you will be dead forever.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, quote from Memories of My Melancholy Whores

“Just as real events are forgotten, some that never were can be in our memories as if they happened.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, quote from Memories of My Melancholy Whores

“The truth is I'm getting old, I said. We already are old, she said with a sigh. What happens is that you don't feel it on the inside, but from the outside everybody can see it.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, quote from Memories of My Melancholy Whores

“Make no mistake: peaceful madmen are ahead of the future.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, quote from Memories of My Melancholy Whores

“As I kissed her the heat of her body increased, and it exhaled a wild, untamed fragrance.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, quote from Memories of My Melancholy Whores

“I always had understood that dying of love was mere poetic license.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, quote from Memories of My Melancholy Whores

“Ah, me, if this is love, then how it torments.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, quote from Memories of My Melancholy Whores

“...the invincible power that has moved the world is unrequited, not happy love”
― Gabriel García Márquez, quote from Memories of My Melancholy Whores

“Love is not a condition of the spirit but a sign of the zodiac.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, quote from Memories of My Melancholy Whores

“Sex is the consolation you have when you can’t have love.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, quote from Memories of My Melancholy Whores

“Siempre pensé que morir de amor solo era una licencia poética.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, quote from Memories of My Melancholy Whores

“And again, as always, after so many years we were still in the same place we always were.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, quote from Memories of My Melancholy Whores

“There's no greater misfortune than dying alone.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, quote from Memories of My Melancholy Whores

“I never had intimate friends, and the few who came close are in New York. By which I mean they're dead, because that's where I suppose condemned souls go in order not to endure the truth of their past lives.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, quote from Memories of My Melancholy Whores

“The year I turned ninety, I wanted to give myself the gift of a night of wild love with an adolescent virgin.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, quote from Memories of My Melancholy Whores

“The only Virgos left in the world are people like you who were born in August.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, quote from Memories of My Melancholy Whores

“I have never done anything except write, but I don't possess the vocation or talents of a narrator, have no knowledge at all of the laws of dramatic composition, and if I have embarked upon this enterprise it is because I trust in the light shed by how much I have read in my life.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, quote from Memories of My Melancholy Whores

“Don’t let yourself die without knowing the wonder of fucking with love”
― Gabriel García Márquez, quote from Memories of My Melancholy Whores

“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.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, quote from Memories of My Melancholy Whores

“Descubrí que mi obsesión de que cada cosa estuviera en su puesto, cada asunto en su tiempo, cada palabra en su estilo, no era el premio merecido de una mente en orden, sino al contrario, todo un sistema de simulación inventado por mí para ocultar el desorden de mi naturaleza. Descubrí que no soy disciplinado por virtud, sino como reacción contra mi negligencia; que parezco generoso por encubrir mi mezquindad, que me paso de prudente por mal pensado, que soy conciliador para no sucumbir a mis cóleras reprimidas, que sólo soy puntual para que no se sepa cuan poco me importa el tiempo ajeno. Descubrí, en fin, que el amor no es un estado del alma sino un signo del zodíaco.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, quote from Memories of My Melancholy Whores

“الشهرة امرأة مفرطة في البدانة , لا يستطيع الرجل أن يضاجعها. لكنه يستيقظ من نومه يجدها قبالة السرير تنظر إليه”
― Gabriel García Márquez, quote from Memories of My Melancholy Whores

“الجنس هو العزاء الذي يلجأ إليه المرء عندما لا يحصل على الحب”
― Gabriel García Márquez, quote from Memories of My Melancholy Whores

“Blood circulated through her veins with the fluidity of a song that branched off into the most hidden areas of her body and returned to her heart, purified by love. Before I left at dawn I drew the lines of her hand on a piece of paper and gave it to Diva Sahibí for a reading so I could know her soul.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, quote from Memories of My Melancholy Whores

“This was when I heard that the first symptom of old age is when you begin to resemble your father.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, quote from Memories of My Melancholy Whores

About the author

Popular quotes

“you see that movie, Chicken Run, where the chickens gang up together and escape from the farm?”
― Charlie Higson, quote from The Fallen

“All I knew that night was that I believed in something and couldn’t express it, while your team believed in nothing but knew how to say it—in other men’s words.”
― Mary McCarthy, quote from The Group

“Please don’t leave me, angel,” I whisper, somewhere on the edges of sleep and the most beautiful dream. “I don’t want to be in the dark anymore.”
― S.L. Jennings, quote from Taint

“That female has the power to enslave men.” Will was growing exasperated. Rónan seemed even more so. “Doona they all?”
― Kresley Cole, quote from MacRieve

“Sometimes I imagine we're all like paper stars, folded up and gathered together, each of us convinced that we are glittering and celestial, each of us bent into a shape so we believe we're something we're not.”
― Katherine Ewell, quote from Dear Killer

Interesting books

About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.