“This Jerónimo, my grandfather, swineherd and story-teller, feeling death about to arrive and take him, went and said goodbye to the trees in the yard, one by one, embracing them and crying because he knew he wouldn't see them again.”

“The trouble is, Roosevelt hasn't taken all of my ideas; just part of them. I'm about one hundred yards ahead of him. We're on the same road, but I'm here and he's there.”

“And when he died, I suddenly realized I wasn't crying for him at all, but for the things he did. I cried because he would never do them again…”

“His grandfather had often told him that he tried too hard to move trees when a wiser man would walk around them.”

“A reader doesn't really see the characters in a story; he feels them.”

“Death is the sanction of everything the story-teller can tell. He has borrowed his authority from death.”

“It was difficult to believe these things had taken place such a very long time ago. The events seemed distant, as though he had only read about them and not experienced them at all. He knew that at this point his death was far closer, far more tangible. That was something he could almost touch. One could feel one’s mortal form progressing slowly to ruin, like that old abbey—the signs were undeniable. Things went wrong inside a man and did not come right again. That was the truth that hung over one’s head like a blade. Injuries and illnesses were no longer easily repaired. And as with some part of a painting that he could never get right, the great danger was to see nothing but what was wrong. The trap of age.”

“And all the woe that moved him so
That he gave that bitter cry
the wild regrets, and the bloody sweats
None knew so well as I:
For he who lives more lives than one
More deaths than one must die.”

“Madame, all stories, if continued far enough, end in death, and he is no true-story teller who would keep that from you.”

“It isn't very pretty to have been made a fool of by one's own feelings,' he said. 'To take childish promises and build a--a castle out of them…”