Quotes from The General in His Labyrinth

“Freedom is often the first casualty of war.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, quote from The General in His Labyrinth

“I'll never fall in love again... it's like having two souls at the same time.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, quote from The General in His Labyrinth

“He was shaken by the overwhelming revelation that the headlong race between his misfortunes ad his dreams was at that moment reaching the finish line. The rest was darkness, 'Damn it,' he sighed. 'How will I ever get out of this labyrinth!”
― Gabriel García Márquez, quote from The General in His Labyrinth

“I go to seek a great perhaps”
― Gabriel García Márquez, quote from The General in His Labyrinth

“Life had already given him sufficient reasons for knowing that no defeat was the final one.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, quote from The General in His Labyrinth

“But he could not renounce his infinite capacity for illusion at the very moment he needed it most... he saw fireflies where there were none.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, quote from The General in His Labyrinth

“Damn it,' he sighed. 'How will I ever get out of this labyrinth!”
― Gabriel García Márquez, quote from The General in His Labyrinth

“I have no friends," he said. "And if I do have any left it won't be for long.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, quote from The General in His Labyrinth

“In his paradise in Lima he had spent a joyous night with a young girl who was covered with fine, straight down over every millimeter of her Bedouin skin. At dawn, while he was shaving, he looked at her lying naked in the bed, adrift in the peaceful sleep of a satisfied woman, and he could not resist the temptation of possessing her forever with a sacramental act. He covered her from head to foot with shaving lather, and with a pleasure like that of love he shaved her clean with his razor, sometimes using his right hand and sometimes his left as he shaved every part of her body, even the eyebrows that grew together, and left her doubly naked inside her magnificent newborn's body. She asked, her soul in shreds, if he really loved her, and he answered with the same ritual phrase he had strewn without pity in so many hearts throughout his life: "More than anyone else in this world.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, quote from The General in His Labyrinth

“You're a great man, General, greater than anyone," she told him. "But love is still too big for you.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, quote from The General in His Labyrinth

“There is great power in the irresistible force of love.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, quote from The General in His Labyrinth

“أولياري رجل عظيم و جندي ممتاز وصديق وفي، لكنه يدوّن كل شيء وليس هناك ما هو أخطر من الذكريات المدونة”
― Gabriel García Márquez, quote from The General in His Labyrinth

“I'm at the mercy of a destiny that isn't mine.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, quote from The General in His Labyrinth

“Jose Palacios, his oldest servant, found him floating naked with his eyes open in the purifying waters of his bath and thought he had drowned.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, quote from The General in His Labyrinth

“And there's nothing more dangerous than a written memoir.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, quote from The General in His Labyrinth

“Other doctors lose as many patients as I do, he would say. But with me they die happier.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, quote from The General in His Labyrinth

“[F]or fate granted him the immense good fortune of losing his memory.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, quote from The General in His Labyrinth

“America is half a world gone mad.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, quote from The General in His Labyrinth

“I'm old, sick, tired, disillusioned, harassed, slandered, and unappreciated.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, quote from The General in His Labyrinth

“Even before his eyes began to fail he had his secretaries read to him, and then he read no other way because of the annoyance that eyeglasses caused him. But his interest in what he read was decreasing at the same time, and as always he attributed this to a cause beyond his control.
"The fact is there are fewer and fewer good books," he would say.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, quote from The General in His Labyrinth

“He finished shaving by touch, still walking around the room, for he tried to see himself in the mirror as little as possible so he would not have to look into his own eyes.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, quote from The General in His Labyrinth

“Let me be, he said. Despair is the health of the damned.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, quote from The General in His Labyrinth

“Someone had told the General that when a dog died it had to be replaced without delay by another just like it, and with the same name, so you could go on believing it was the same animal. He did not agree. He always wanted them to be distinctive so he could remember them all with their own identities, their yearning eyes and eager spirits, and could mourn their deaths.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, quote from The General in His Labyrinth

“Then he crossed his arms over his chest and began to listen to the radiant voices of the slaves singing the six o'clock Salve in the mills, and through the window he saw the diamond of Venus in the sky that was dying forever, the eternal snows, the new vine whose yellow bellflowers he would not see bloom on the following Saturday in the house closed in mourning, the final brilliance of life that would never, through all eternity, be repeated again.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, quote from The General in His Labyrinth

“Don't stay with Urdanetea, he told him. And don't go with your family to the United States. It's omnipotent and terrible, and its tale of liberty will end in a plague of miseries for us all.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, quote from The General in His Labyrinth

“لقد ثبت مرات كثيرة عبر تاريخ البشرية الطويل أن الرغبة هي الابنة الشرعية للحاجة.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, quote from The General in His Labyrinth

“The only wars here will be civil wars, and those are like killing your own mother.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, quote from The General in His Labyrinth

“That dawn he officiated at the daily mass of his ablutions with more frenetic severity than usual, trying to purge his body and spirit of twenty years of fruitless wars and the disillusionments of power.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, quote from The General in His Labyrinth

“لا نريد منكم مزيدا من الإحسان بقولكم لنا ماعلينا عمله. لا تحاولوا أن تعلمونا كيف يجب أن نكون،لا تسعوا إلى جعلنا مثلكم،ولا تنتظروا منا أن نحقق خلال عشرين سنة،بشكل جيد،ماحققتموه بشكل سئ خلال ألفي سنة.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, quote from The General in His Labyrinth

“دعني بحالي. فاليأس هو الصحة للخاسرين.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, quote from The General in His Labyrinth

About the author

Popular quotes

“ “Rachel...you need help.”
I laugh and it’s the same bitter laugh I remember him giving when we met so many weeks ago. “So do you.”
“I love you.” Isaiah says it so simply that my heart soars and sinks at the same time.
“I love you,” I whisper. “Did you ever think that loving someone could hurt so bad?”
Isaiah shakes his head and stares out the window.
“What’s going to happen to us?” I ask. Because I don’t know how the two of us can continue forward. Isaiah refuses to let me in. It’s sort of cruel. He’s brought me close with his stories of his childhood and with his words of love, but he can’t relinquish control. I refuse to be with someone who won’t treat me as an equal.”
― Katie McGarry, quote from Crash into You

“I'VE LEARNED THAT YOU CAN'T CONTROL WHAT OTHER PEOPLE ARE GOING TO THINK ABOUT YOU.
THE BEST YOU CAN DO IN LIFE IS NOT PISS YOURSELF
OFF.”
― Megan McCafferty, quote from Second Helpings

“When we reflect that her century was the brutalest, the wickedest, the rottenest in history since the darkest ages, we are lost in wonder at the miracle of such a product from such a soil. The contrast between her and her century is the contrast between day and night. She was truthful when lying was the common speech of men; she was honest when honesty was become a lost virtue; she was a keeper of promises when the keeping of a promise was expected of no one; she gave her great mind to great thoughts and great purposes when other great minds wasted themselves upon pretty fancies or upon poor ambitions; she was modest, and fine, and delicate when to be loud and coarse might be said to be universal; she was full of pity when a merciless cruelty was the rule; she was steadfast when stability was unknown, and honorable in an age which had forgotten what honor was; she was a rock of convictions in a time when men believed in nothing and scoffed at all things; she was unfailingly true to an age that was false to the core; she maintained her personal dignity unimpaired in an age of fawnings and servilities; she was of a dauntless courage when hope and courage had perished in the hearts of her nation; she was spotlessly pure in mind and body when society in the highest places was foul in both—she was all these things in an age when crime was the common business of lords and princes, and when the highest personages in Christendom were able to astonish even that infamous era and make it stand aghast at the spectacle of their atrocious lives black with unimaginable treacheries, butcheries, and beastialities.”
― Mark Twain, quote from Joan of Arc

“I had never seen a woman's breasts before, and I doubted if any seven-year-old boy in Craighead County had. Maybe some kid had stumbled upon his mother, but I was certain no boy my age had never had this view.”
― John Grisham, quote from A Painted House

“...I want to grab her collarbones as if they were handlebars.”
― Joe Dunthorne, quote from Submarine

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.