How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
Remedios went over and asked some questions about the fish that Aureliano could not answer because he was seized with a sudden attack of asthma. He wanted to stay beside that skin forever, beside those emerald eyes, close to that voice that called him "sir" with every question, showing the same respect that she gave her father. […]
That afternoon Aureliano lost the hidden patience with which he had waited for a chance to see her. He neglected his work. In several desperate efforts of concentration he willed her to appear but Remedios did not respond. He looked for her in her sisters' shop, behind the window shades in her house, in her father's office, but he found her only in the image that saturated his private and terrible solitude. He would spend whole hours with Rebeca in the parlor listening to the music on the pianola. She was listening to it because it was the music with which Pietro Crespi had taught them how to dance. Aureliano listened to it simply because everything, even music, reminded him of Remedios. The house became full of love. Aureliano expressed it in poetry that had no beginning or end. He would write it on the harsh pieces of parchment that Melquíades gave him, on the bathroom walls, on the skin of his arms, and in all of it Remedios would appear transfigured: Remedios in the soporific air of two in the afternoon, Remedios in the soft breath of the roses, Remedios in the water-clock secrets of the moths, Remedios in the steaming morning bread, Remedios everywhere and Remedios forever. (4.9-10)
If you can overlook the inappropriateness of a nine-year-old love object, this is about as classic a description of falling in love as you'll find in this novel. That said, the whole can't-eat-can't-sleep thing would make way more sense if Aureliano were, say, fourteen rather than in his 30s. Yeah, gross.
Quote #2
Amaranta's sensibility, her discreet but enveloping tenderness had been weaving an invisible web about her fiancé, which he had to push aside materially with his pale and ringless fingers in order to leave the house at eight o'clock. […] After crossing the ocean in search of it, after having confused passion with the vehement stroking of Rebeca, Pietro Crespi had found love. […]
Pietro Crespi took the sewing basket from her lap and he told her, "We'll get married next month." Amaranta did not tremble at the contact with his icy hands. She withdrew hers like a timid little animal and went back to her work. "Don't be simple, Crespi." She smiled. "I wouldn't marry you even if I were dead." (6.8-9)
This passage is key to understanding the relationships in this novel, namely the part where the narrator tells us that Pietro confused "passion" with "love." He's far from alone: many of the characters in the novel don't seem to understand the difference between sexual attraction and long-term relationship prospects. Can you think of relationships that do and don't fit this model?
Quote #3
Amaranta was really making an effort to kindle in her heart the forgotten ashes of her youthful passion. With an anxiety that came to be intolerable, she waited for the lunch days, the afternoons of Chinese checkers, and time flew by in the company of the warrior with a nostalgic name whose fingers trembled imperceptibly as he moved the pieces. But the day on which Colonel Gerineldo Márquez repeated his wish to marry her, she rejected him.
"I'm not going to marry anyone," she told him, "much less you. You love Aureliano so much that you want to marry me because you can't marry him.
Colonel Gerineldo Márquez was a patient man. "I'll keep on visiting the house." Shut up in her bedroom, biting back her secret tears, Amaranta put her fingers in her ears so as not to hear the voice of the suitor as he gave Úrsula the latest war news, and in spite of the fact that she was dying to see him, she had the strength not to go out and meet him. (7.54-56)
What kind of game is Amaranta playing here? If she's "dying to see" Colonel Gerineldo Márquez, why doesn't she? If you can even halfway explain the box of crazy that is Amaranta, you'll be ahead of us.