Living to Tell the Tale

Living to Tell the Tale (original Spanish-language title: Vivir para contarla) is the first volume of the autobiography of Gabriel García Márquez.

• Life is not what one lived, but what one remembers and how one remembers it in order to recount it.

• Before adolescence, memory is more interested in the future than the past...

• Nostalgia, as always, had wiped away bad memories and magnified the good ones.

• Now you don't have to say yes because your heart is saying it for you.

• Children's lies are signs of great talent.

• But I believe without any doubt at all that our greatest good fortune was that even in the most extreme difficulties we might lose our patience but never our sense of humor.

• It was impossible to conceive of two creatures so different who got along so well and loved each other so much.

• From the time they turned one they were tossed from the balconies of the kitchens, first with life preserves so they would lose their fear of the water, and then without life preservers so they would lose their respect for death.

• "There are no two men in this world more similar than you and him," she told me. "And that's the worst thing for having a conversation."

• ... no sooner had you done something than someone else appeared who threatened to do it better.

• ... nothing was easy, least of all surviving Sunday afternoons without love.

• ... my unhealthy timidity might be a great obstacle to me in my life.

• Because for you, quitting smoking would be like killing someone you love.

• 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.

• I couldn't tell you because even I don't know who I am yet.

• ... for an instant I thought about stopping the cab to say goodbye, but I preferred not to defy again a destiny as uncertain and persistent as mine.