In His Own Words, GGM

The passing of Gabriel Garcia Marquez last week has been widely noted and his pathbreaking work in creating the spell of Magic Realism justly praised around the world.  Let his words speak:

"Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice."  One Hundred Years of Solitude

“It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love.”  Love in the Time of Cholera

“She would defend herself, saying that love, no matter what else it might be, was a natural talent. She would say: You are either born knowing how, or you never know.”  Love in the Time of Cholera

“It's enough for me to be sure that you and I exist at this moment.”  One Hundred Years of Solitude

“The only regret I will have in dying is if it is not for love.”  Love in the Time of Cholera

"My heart has more rooms in it than a whorehouse."  Love in the Time of Cholera

“To him she seemed so beautiful, so seductive, so different from ordinary people, that he could not understand why no one was as disturbed as he by the clicking of her heels on the paving stones, why no one else's heart was wild with the breeze stirred by the sighs of her veils, why everyone did not go mad with the movements of her braid, the flight of her hands, the gold of her laughter. He had not missed a single one of her gestures, not one of the indications of her character, but he did not dare approach her for fear of destroying the spell.”  Love in the Time of Cholera

"I don't believe in God, but I'm afraid of Him."  Love in the Time of Cholera

“He was still too young to know that the heart's memory eliminates the bad and magnifies the good, and that thanks to this artifice we manage to endure the burden of the past.”  Love in the Time of Cholera

“But when a woman decides to sleep with a man, there is no wall she will not scale, no fortress she will not destroy, no moral consideration she will not ignore at its very root: there is no God worth worrying about.”  Love in the Time of Cholera

“Tell him yes. Even if you are dying of fear, even if you are sorry later, because whatever you do, you will be sorry all the rest of your life if you say no.”  Love in the Time of Cholera

"He recognised her despite the uproar, through his tears of unrepeatable sorrow at dying without her, and he looked at her for the last and final time with eyes more luminous, more grief-stricken, more grateful than she had ever seen them in half a century of a shared life, and he managed to say to her with his last breath: 'Only God knows how much I loved you.'"  Love in the Time of Cholera