One Hundred Years of Solitude Quotes

Find the perfect quote to float your boat. Shmoop breaks down key quotations from One Hundred Years of Solitude.

Memory and the Past Quotes

The world was so recent that many things lacked names, and in order to indicate them it was necessary to point. (1.1)

The Supernatural Quotes

Prudencio Aguilar did not go away, nor did José Arcadio Buendía dare throw the spear. He never slept well after that. He was tormented by the immense desolation with which the dead man had looked...

Family Quotes

Úrsula suddenly realized that the house had become full of people, that her children were on the point of marrying and having children, and that they would be obliged to scatter for lack of space....

Sex Quotes

Then he [José Arcadio (II)] gave himself over to that hand [Pilar Ternera's], and in a terrible state of exhaustion he let himself be led to a shapeless place where his clothes were taken off and...

Warfare Quotes

A burning noonday sun brought out a startling demonstration with the gigantic magnifying glass: they put a pile of dry hay in the middle of the street and set it on fire by concentrating the sun's...

Fate and Free Will Quotes

When the pirate Sir Francis Drake attacked Riohacha in the sixteenth century, Úrsula Iguarán's great-great-grandmother became so frightened with the ringing of alarm bells and the firing of canno...

Wisdom and Knowledge Quotes

[José Arcadio Buendía] would spend the day walking through the house. "Incredible things are happening in the world," he said to Úrsula. "Right there across the river there are all kinds of magi...

Perseverance Quotes

Úrsula's capacity for work was the same as that of her husband. Active, small, severe, that woman of unbreakable nerves who at no moment in her life had been heard to sing seemed to be everywhere,...

Love Quotes

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 t...

Death Quotes

The gypsy was inclined to stay in the town. He really had been through death, but he had returned because he could not bear the solitude. (3.16)