Gabriel García Márquez's most beautiful quotes
The top 3 according to 83 votes from people: The world was so recent that many things lacked names, and in order to indicate them it was necessary to point. · Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon… · Life is not what one lived, but what one remembers and how one remembers it in order to recount it.. (Updated Jan 11, 2023.)
Lines by Gabo from his novels, memoirs and speeches, each with its book. Note: the famous «Marionette» poem that circulates as his farewell isn't his; it was written by Mexican ventriloquist Johnny Welch.
Automatically translated (original in Español). See the original
Top 12
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1
The world was so recent that many things lacked names, and in order to indicate them it was necessary to point.
One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967), on the early days of Macondo.
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2
Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon…
«Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.» The opening of One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967), one of the most famous first lines in literature.
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3
Life is not what one lived, but what one remembers and how one remembers it in order to recount it.
Epigraph of his memoir Living to Tell the Tale (2002).
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4
The only regret I will have in dying is if it is not for love.
Love in the Time of Cholera (1985).
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5
Forever.
Florentino Ariza's answer at the end of Love in the Time of Cholera, when asked how long they'll keep sailing up and down the river.
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6
Wisdom comes to us when it can no longer do any good.
Love in the Time of Cholera (1985).
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7
A person does not belong to a place until there is someone dead under the ground.
José Arcadio Buendía in One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967).
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8
On the day they were going to kill him, Santiago Nasar got up at five-thirty in the morning to wait for the boat the…
«On the day they were going to kill him, Santiago Nasar got up at five-thirty in the morning to wait for the boat the bishop was coming on.» The opening of Chronicle of a Death Foretold (1981): the ending is told in the first line.
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9
No madman is mad if one accepts his reasons.
Of Love and Other Demons (1994).
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10
It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love.
First line of Love in the Time of Cholera (1985).
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11
Where the races condemned to one hundred years of solitude will have, at last and forever, a second opportunity on…
«Where the races condemned to one hundred years of solitude will have, at last and forever, a second opportunity on earth.» The close of his Nobel lecture, «The Solitude of Latin America» (1982), turning the end of his novel around.
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12
The secret of a good old age is simply an honorable pact with solitude.
One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967).
Candidates
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13
Let us simplify grammar before grammar ends up simplifying us.
From the speech «A bottle in the sea for the god of words», Zacatecas Language Congress (1997).
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14
Races condemned to one hundred years of solitude did not have a second opportunity on earth.
Last line of One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967).
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