3 Gabriel Garcia Marquez Quotes on Power

Gabriel Garcia Marquez quotes on power

11. In the shattered schoolhouse where for the first time he had felt the security of power, a few feet from the room where he had come to know the uncertainty of love, Arcadio found the formality of death ridiculous. Death really did not matter to him but life did and therefore the sensation he felt when they gave their decision was not a feeling of fear but of nostalgia. He did not speak until they asked him for his last request. (p. 119)

15. Lost in the solitude of his immense power, he began to lose direction. He was bothered by the people who cheered him in neighboring villages, and he imagined that they were the same cheers they gave the enemy. Everywhere he met adolescents who looked at him with his own eyes, who spoke to him with his own voice, who greeted him with the same mistrust with which he greeted them, and who said they were his sons. He felt scattered about, multiplied, and more solitary than ever. He was convinced that his own officers were lying to him. He fought with the Duke of Marlborough. 'The best friend a person has,' he would say at that time, 'is one who has just died.' (p. 166)

16. At dawn, worn out by the tormented vigil, he appeared in the cell an hour before the execution. 'The farce is over, old friend,' he said to Colonel Gerineldo Marquez. 'Let's get out of here before the mosquitos in here execute you.' Colonel Gerineldo Marquez could not express the disdain that was inspired in him by that attitude. 'No, Aureliano,' he replied. 'I'd rather be dead than see you changed into a tyrant.' 'You won't see me,' Colonel Aureliano Buendia said. 'Put your shoes and help me get this shitty war over with.' When he said it he did not know that it was easier to start a war than to end one. (p. 169)