Published in Spanish in 2002 and translated to English by Edith Grossman in 2003, “Living to Tell the Tale” is Gabriel García Márquez’s first autobiographical volume.
The novel employs his signature storytelling style to recount the tale of a young artist in the mid-1950s, reflecting the craft that he is known for in his fictional works.
I have curated a list of the top quotes from Living to Tell the Tale novel.
Table of Contents
Living to Tell the Tale Quotes
“I knew what she thought of them by the changes in her silence.” ~ Gabriel García Márquez (Living to Tell the Tale).
“The move to Arcata was seen by my grandparents as a journey into forgetting.” ~ Gabriel García Márquez (Living to Tell the Tale).
“My heart in an uproar.” ~ Gabriel García Márquez (Living to Tell the Tale).
“The audacious telegraph operator took the flower from his buttonhole and said to her: “I give you my life in this rose.” ~ Gabriel García Márquez (Living to Tell the Tale).
“Nothing was eaten in the house that was not seasoned in the broth of longing.” ~ Gabriel García Márquez (Living to Tell the Tale).
“It took me many years not to make arrogant distinctions between good and bad.” ~ Gabriel García Márquez (Living to Tell the Tale).
“That was the state of the world when I began to be aware of my family environment, and I cannot evoke it in any other way: sorrows, griefs, uncertainties in the solitude of an immense house.” ~ Gabriel García Márquez (Living to Tell the Tale).
Related Book Quotes: Requiem for a Dream Quotes by Hubert Selby Jr. and The Richest Man in Babylon Quotes by George Clason
Quotes from Living to Tell the Tale
“Dawns in the dormitory had a suspicious resemblance to happiness.” ~ Gabriel García Márquez (Living to Tell the Tale).
“Before adolescence, memory is more interested in the future than the past, and so my recollections of the town were not yet idealized by nostalgia.” ~ Gabriel García Márquez (Living to Tell the Tale).
“Escaped the torments of memory with the aromatic fumes of gold cyanide.” ~ Gabriel García Márquez (Living to Tell the Tale).
“She was the only person in the house, of either sex, who did not seem to have a heart pierced by the sorrow of thwarted love.” ~ Gabriel García Márquez (Living to Tell the Tale).
“Before that, my life was always agitated by a tangle of tricks, feints and illusions intended to outwit the countless lures that tried to turn me into anything but a writer.” ~ Gabriel García Márquez (Living to Tell the Tale).
“I discovered the miracle that all things that sound are music, including the dishes and silverware in the dishwasher, as long as they fulfill the illusion of showing us where life is heading.” ~ Gabriel García Márquez (Living to Tell the Tale).
Famous Living to Tell the Tale Quotes
“Gabito isn’t deceiving anyone,” she said with an innocent smile, “but sometimes it happens that even God needs to make weeks that are two years long.” ~ Gabriel García Márquez (Living to Tell the Tale).
“I soaked the conversations up like a sponge, pulled them apart, rearranged them to make their origins disappear, and when I told them to the same people who had told the stories earlier, they were bewildered by the coincidence between what I said and what they were thinking.” ~ Gabriel García Márquez (Living to Tell the Tale).
“On the other hand, for years I did not listen to Mozart after I was assaulted by the perverse idea that Mozart does not exist, because when he is good he is Beethoven and when he is bad he is Haydn.” ~ Gabriel García Márquez (Living to Tell the Tale).
“Nostalgia, as always, had wiped away the bad memories and magnified the good ones. no one was safe from its onslaught.” ~ Gabriel García Márquez (Living to Tell the Tale).
Best Living to Tell the Tale Quotes
“But in the days that followed I realized he was only what he seemed: a giant baby with a heart too big for his body.” ~ Gabriel García Márquez (Living to Tell the Tale).
“The colonel, pursued by sinister remorse for having killed a man in an affair of honor, brought everything necessary for recreating the past as far away as possible from his bad memories.” ~ Gabriel García Márquez (Living to Tell the Tale).
“They entrenched themselves in their preferences, their beliefs, their prejudices, and closed ranks against everything that was different.” ~ Gabriel García Márquez (Living to Tell the Tale).
“Until I discovered the miracle that all things that sound are music, including dishes and silverware in the dishwasher, as long as they fulfill the illusion of showing us where life is heading.” ~ Gabriel García Márquez (Living to Tell the Tale).
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