Book: Autumn of the Patriarch

...He died as death said, he died when he least wanted it, when after so many years of fruitless illusions and self-deception he began to realize that people do not live, but exist, damn it, that the longest and most active life is only enough for that to learn to live - at the very end...

...There is no punishment for a person more humiliating and at the same time more fair than betrayal of one’s own essence, decrepitude of one’s own body and memory...

“It’s okay, sleep well, mother, presidents don’t stay in this palace, may God grant you to live here for at least half a month,” and he believed what he said, not only then, but at every moment of his long life as a despot and hermit, “ and he believed the more strongly the more convinced he was that the ruler did not have two identical days; he had always imagined some hidden purpose in the fact that the Prime Minister, during his daily reports, added a modest wildflower of truth to the lush bouquet of lies...

Yes, it was - no matter what they say - real mourning, and the grief was genuine, for his [the dictator's] death, which we had been waiting for so long and so longingly, revealed a lot to us in ourselves, and above all that, while waiting in complete hopelessness, when he dies from any of his royal illnesses, when the news of his death - so many times passed on in whispers from mouth to mouth and so many times refuted - will finally become true, we have ended ourselves, burned out to the ground, and now we are not they believed in his final departure not because they were not really convinced of it, but because deep down in their souls they no longer wanted it; we could not imagine how we would live further, how life could continue without him - our life, in which he, as it turned out, occupied such an inordinately large place...

...The only weapon with which you can defeat an unbending, proud enemy is the hand of friendship, if you offer it first.

A country without heroes is like a house without doors.

...Fear and hatred sharpen memory...

...I honestly tell you something that others will never dare to do, although they keep it to themselves... The point is, my general, that you are not a president... no one considers you a legitimate president... you are sitting in the presidential chair only because the British put you in it... and after them the Yankees supported you with a pair of deadly eggs from their armadillo... I saw, I remember how you ran around, scurried around like a beetle, not knowing what to do, losing your head with fear when the gringos barked at you : "All! Stay alone in this dirty brothel! Let's see how you cope without us! " And if you haven’t gotten off and don’t intend to get off that chair since then, it’s not at all because you liked it so much, but because it’s simply impossible for you... fear is the point... Admit it, my general, you understand perfectly well that if you appeared on the street in the position of an ordinary mortal, people would pounce on you like shepherd dogs to get even with you...

...The thing about power is this: if something falls out of the bag, it’s gone, and there’s no point in maintaining idiotic illusions!

...He ruled as if he was sure that he would never die, and the presidential palace with all its courts and services looked more like a market than a palace

And he took Saturno of General Santos to his service, made his guardaespaldas so, however, on the condition that he never stood behind him.

Why the hell nothing has changed in this world after my death? How can it be that the sun still rises and sets and did not stumble? Why, mother, Sunday left Sunday, and the heat the same unbearable heat and with me?

Never give orders, if not sure I'll do it!

Truth or fiction - what's the difference? All become true with time, any garbage!