One night she came back from her daily walk stunned by the revelation that one could be happy not only without love, but despite it. - Gabriel García Márquez

One could be happy not only without love, but despite it.

Then the writing became so fluid that I sometimes felt as if I were writing for the sheer pleasure of telling a story, which may be the human condition that most resembles levitation.

It had to be a mad dream, one that would give her the courage she would need to discard the prejudices of a class that had not always been hers but had become hers more than anyone’s. It had to teach her to think of love as a state of grace: not the means to anything but the alpha and omega, an end in itself.

Ultimately, literature is nothing but carpentry.