Passing passages

You are not bad people. You are blind to the present and we are blind to the future. In the immigration detention centre I used to smile when the detention officers explained to me, The reason you have come over here, you Africans, is that you just aren't capable of good government over there. I used to tell them that near my village there was a wide, deep river with dark caves under the banks where the fish were pale and blind. There was no light in their caves, so after a thousand generations the trick of seeing had been distilled out of their species. Do you see what I mean? I said to the detention officers. Without light, how can you preserve the vision of government? We could try as hard as we liked in my world. We could have a most diligent home secretary of lunchtime. We could have an excellent prime minister of the quietest part of the late afternoon. But when twilight comes- do you see? our world disappears. It cannot see beyond the day, because you have taken

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' , by Gabrial Garcia Marquez

One night he went to Don Sancho's Inn, an elegant colonial restaurant, and sat in the most remote corner, as was his custom when he ate his frugal meals alone. All at once, in the large mirror on the black wall, he caught a glimpse of Fermina Daza sitting at a table with her husband and two other couples, at an angle that allowed him to see her reflected in all her splendor. She was unguarded, she engaged in conversation with grace and laughter that exploded like fireworks, and her beauty was more radiant under the enormous teardrop chandeliers: once again, Alice had gone through the glass. Holding his breath, Florentino Ariza observed her at his pleasure: he saw her eat, he saw her hardly touch her wine, he saw her joke with the fourth in line of Don Sanchos; from his solitary table he shared a moment of her life, and for more than an hour he lingered, unseen, in the forbidden precincts of her intimacy. Then he drank four more cups of coffee to pass the time until he saw her leave

He liked to say that his love was a result of a clinical error. ~ 'Love in the time of cholera' , by Gabrial Garcia Marquez

He repeated until his dying day that there was no one with more common sense, no stonecutter more obstinate, no manager more lucid or dangerous, than a poet. ~ 'Love in the time of cholera' , by Gabrial Garcia Marquez

No, not rich. I am a poor man with money, which is not the same thing. ~ 'Love in the time of cholera' , by Gabrial Garcia Marquez

He allowed himself to be swayed by his conviction that human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them, but that life obliges them over and over again to give birth to themselves. ~ 'Love in the time of cholera' , by Gabrial Garcia Marquez