El espectro de la pobreza, como el de la soledad, rondaba siempre a los viejos.
In her experience, light skin and money made almost anything easier. She wanted her grandchildren to come into the world with an advantage.
Un hombre hace lo que puede, una mujer hace lo que el hombre no puede.
Her stoic attitude contributed to the air of mystery surrounding her, long before she had any secrets to keep.
Walking and walking across the world he will gradually find consolation, and one day, when he is too fatigued to take another step, he will realize that he cannot escape sorrow, he will have to tame it, so it doesn’t harass him.
There’s a certain freshness and innocence in people who have always lived in one place and can count on witnesses to their passage through the world. In contrast, those of us who have moved on many times develop tough skin out of necessity. Since we lack roots or corroboration of who we are, we must put our trust in memory to give continuity to our lives... but memory is always cloudy, we can’t trust it.
What’s the worst thing about growing old?” she would ask them. They never thought about their age, was a common reply; they had once been adolescents, then they were thirty, fifty, sixty, and never gave it a thought, so why should they do so now?
Nothing can grow in the shade of secrets, she would say, love needs light and space to flourish.
I go, but I always remember you.
I must not linger on details, daughter, because if we dally, this account may be left unfinished, and no one wants to read hundreds of quartos only to find that the story has no clear ending.
He missed his venerable master, who had marked him forever with a thirst for knowledge as persistent as the drunk’s thirst for alcohol or the ambitious man’s thirst for power. He no longer had his mentor’s library or his inexhaustible fount of experience.
Full belly, happy heart,” was the favorite saying of Padre Mendoza, who had been obsessed with good nutrition ever since he’d heard of sailors suffering from scurvy when a lemon could have prevented their agony.
Why be so attached to what we are bound to lose anyway?
We all have demons in the dark recesses of our soul, but if we bring them out into the light, they grow smaller and weaker, they fall silent and eventually leave us in peace.
Maybe the war against this cancer is lost, but meanwhile we can win a few battles.
He had a booming laugh that bubbled up from the bowels of the earth and shook him from head to toe.
Since we’re going to suffer, let’s clench our teeth,” she said. Pain like that, pain of the soul, does not go away with remedies, therapy, or vacations; you simply endure it deep down, fully, as you should. I would have done well to follow my Nini’s example, instead of denying that I was suffering and stifling the howl that was stuck in my chest.
She believed that by giving problems a name they tended to manifest themselves, and then it was impossible to ignore them; whereas if they remained in the limbo of unspoken words, they could disappear by themselves, with the passage of time.
It was then that I understood that the days of Colonel Garcia and all those like him are numbered, because they have not been able to destroy the spirit of these women.
It was an election year and there was reason for concern over the turn of events. The country was waking up. The wave of discontent that was stirring the people was beginning to strike at the heart of that oligarchic society.