I was fifteen when I returned to Santiago, disoriented from having lived several years outside the country and from having lost my ties with my old friends and my cousins.
I took the opportunity to tell her about you, a stupendous young man, sensible and of solid principles, handsome, hardworking, and intelligent. Etelvina, who was serving the pie, froze with the knife in the air and asked me who I was talking about.
They’re really good people. Quakers are always to be found where they’re most needed.
The argument went on and on, and they became locked in a confused rhetorical exchange that left them exhausted, each accusing the other of being more stubborn than a mule. But in the end they kissed each other good night and both were left with the feeling that the other was an extraordinary human being.
He had the awkward tenderness of someone who has never been loved and is forced to improvise.
She’d once admitted during confession that she felt doomed to bear only sons, like a curse from the Devil. In penitence she was ordered to recite a rosary every day for two years straight and to make a sizable donation to the church renovation fund. Her husband forbade her from returning to confession.
What reasons do you have to be sad, child?” “That’s what my husband asks me. I don’t know, Victor, I suppose you don’t need reasons; it’s part of your nature.
That is s-s-s-something.
The young soldier was part of the “Baby Bottle Conscription,” the boys called up when there were no more men, young or old, to fight the war.
Poetry is what stays in your head and isn’t forgotten.
You’ve completely forgotten what it takes to raise a child, Mr. Bogart. And this girl is traumatized – she misses her mother, she’s been pulled away from everything she knows, her family, her friends, her school, her community, her language. Can you imagine what that must be like?
It was a long night, perhaps the longest in my life. I spent it sitting next to Rosa’s tomb, speaking with her, accompanying her on the first part of her journey to the Hereafter, which is when it’s hardest to detach yourself from earth and you need the love of those who have remained behind, so you can leave with at least the consolation of having planted something in someone else’s heart.
She was facing exile now with the same courage as she had done then, without complaining, without looking back, her eyes fixed on the future.
But do you know what I’m most grateful for? Love. That has marked me more than anything else.
Carme told them she couldn’t remember what she felt, but she realized it’s hard to die, and to invite death is cowardice.
One day they would need to have the discussion about how long mourning lasts, how long the dead are allowed to haunt us.
She was the only one in the family who did not lose her serenity, thanks to her training in surmounting pain and the fact that her grandmother had often explained to her the circumstances and rituals of death.
Blanca argued that her reading should be monitored because there were certain things that were inappropriate for her age, but her Uncle Jaime felt that people never read what did not interest them and that if it interested them that meant they were sufficiently mature to read it.
She was one of those people who are born for the greatness of a single love, for exaggerated hatred, for apocalyptic vengeance, and for the most sublime forms of heroism, but she was unable to shape her fate to the dimensions of her amorous vocation...
Justice! Is it just for everyone to have the same amount? The lazy the same as those who work? The foolish the same as the intelligent? Even animals don’t live like that! It’s not a matter of rich and poor, it’s a matter of strong and weak.
But do you know what I’m most grateful for? Love. That has marked me more than anything else. I was incredibly lucky to have Roser. She’ll always be the love of my life. Thanks to her I have Marcel. Being a father has also been essential for me; it’s allowed me to keep faith in what’s best in the human condition.