The Death Of Artemio Cruz Quotes
"Fear. I'm afraid of thinking about my own body."
"Thinking about your body wears you out. Your own body. Your body, whole. It wears you out."
"My breathing fogs the squares of glass."
"Yesterday Artemio Cruz flew from Hermosillo to Mexico City."
"You don’t know if it’s worthwhile remembering it."
"You only want to remember, lying back there in the twilight of your bedroom, what’s going to happen."
"You will remember the half you left behind: destiny will find you."
"The fruit has two halves: today they will be united once again."
"If what this man wanted was to humiliate him, Father Páez would listen to him today and tomorrow with his eyes lowered."
"You will have lived so much dead life, so many moments of mere gesticulation."
"You will have to give credit to the night and accept it without seeing it."
"You will smile, despite the pain that reasserts itself."
"You will feel divided, a man who will receive and a man who will act, sensor man and motor man."
"You will hear color, and you will touch sound, see smells, smell taste."
"Survive through memory before it’s too late."
"Before chaos keeps you from remembering."
"You will live seventy-one years without realizing it."
"Nothing can last forever without becoming normal."
"I compare it to giving birth; it makes me laugh."
"That colorless face that I manage to see in the asymmetrical mirrors on Teresa’s handbag."
"You curse Him because you believe in Him..."
"That does me some good. I’m going to admit all this because if I rebel I concede that those things exist."
"That’s what it means to be a man, which is what I’ve been, not the way you would have wanted, half a man, a man with his little temper tantrums."
"To live is to betray your God. Every act in life, every act that affirms us as living beings, requires that the commandments of your God be broken."
"In the depth of your pain, you will smell that incense which lingers and lingers."
"You will stand fast. You’ve probably made a secret vow: not to acknowledge your debts."
"You smell the incense. You smell the enclosed garden."
"But it wasn’t the city that ran before his glassy, fixed eyes, but the word."
"The priest sighed: she would not beg, and all that was left to him, standing before this man with green eyes, was a moment to act out his resignation."
"I smell that old oil they use to muck up my eyes, my nose, my lips, my cold feet, my blue hands, my thighs, near my sex, and I ask them to open the window: I want to breathe."
"Who will have the honesty to say, as I say now, that my only love has been to possess things, their sensual property?"
"I’m an old man, is that right? An old man filled with manias, who has a perfect right to have them because he screwed himself, see?"
"You will remember in order to remember within memory."
"Whether he sleeps or keeps watch, he is always alone, always separated from his men by a few yards of bare ground."
"He lived a dry but controlled dread in those minutes when unforeseen tranquillity surrounded him."
"The absolute silence of the canyon secretly alarmed him, and he tightened the reins and flexed the muscles of his right arm and hand so he could swiftly pull out his pistol."
"He felt only astonishment at the blind wisdom of his body as it avoided danger by standing or crouching, his face hidden behind a tree trunk."
"Adventure: you will imagine the greater security, never to move."
"You will learn to control your violence in order to control the violence of your enemies."
"He straightened his tie and for a few seconds caressed its rich silk, which rustled under the touch of his fingers."
"Laura, curled up, hugging the pillows, her back turned toward him."
"I have a son, I made him: because now I remember that face."
"You must have awakened that morning, as you did every day, with expectant joy."
"I'm your best friend, maybe your only friend..."
"Do you really love Our Lord? Do you believe all the things I've taught you?"
"My God, why am I asking you this? I have no right, really, I have no right..."
"I’m not afraid. The border’s on the other side. Tonight we’ll be in France, in a house and in bed."
"I’ll never forget this one, Papa, because I learned everything I know here."
"All right, priest, tell me how I can save all that, and I’ll let you go through the ceremony."
"How can man want to live when God wants him to die..."
"That’s really what it’s like to be God, for certain, isn’t it?—to be feared and hated and whatever, that’s what being God is, really, right?"
"Real power is always born out of revolt."
"You will choose to leave him in Catalina’s hands, you will not bring him to that land."
"You will not be Artemio Cruz, you will not be seventy-one years old."
"They will not touch the sumptuous carving, the opulent inlay, the gold-and-stucco moldings."
"He imagined them... all of them, each one, in a row, standing before the toilet bowls in the floor below."
"I could mock myself while I was alive... now I can... my right."
"You will inherit the sweet, disinterested faces with no future because they do everything today, say everything today, are the present and exist in the present."
"You are an animal that foresees its death, sings its death, says it, dances it, paints it, remembers it before dying its death."
"Like a green half-moon, the arc from Tamiahua to Coatzcoalcos will devour the white face of the sea in a useless attempt."
They say "tomorrow" because tomorrow doesn’t matter to them.
"You will be that boy who goes forth to the land, finds the land, leaves his origins, finds his destiny."
"They didn’t speak. But the mulatto and the boy felt the same happy gratitude at being together."
"The time of paralyzed branches, when even the river seemed not to flow."
"I know they’ve pierced my forearm with that needle; I scream before I feel any pain."
"You will no longer know: you will not experience your open heart, tonight, your open heart."
"You are going to live … You are going to be the meeting point, the universal order’s reason for being."
"I carried you within and I shall die with you … all three … We shall die … You … are dying … have died … I shall die."