A person doesn't die when he should but when he can.
Interpretation
This quote highlights the idea that death is not determined by age or circumstances but rather by the unique nature of each individual's life and experiences.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez's quote suggests that the timing of a person's death is not necessarily tied to a predetermined schedule of life expectancy. Instead, it reflects the complexities of individual existence, the choices made, and the inherent unpredictability of life. Each person has their own journey, and thus, they meet their end based on personal circumstances rather than societal norms or expectations.
In practice
In a speech about embracing life's unpredictability, one might quote this to emphasize how we should live fully.
He said that people who loved [animals] to excess were capable of the worst cruelties toward human beings. He said that dogs were not loyal but servile, that cats were opportunists and traitors, that peacocks were heralds of death, that macaws were simply decorative annoyances, that rabbits fomented greed, that monkeys carried the fever of lust, and that roosters were damned because they had been complicit in the three denials of Christ.
Amputees suffer pains, cramps, itches in the leg that is no longer there. That is how she felt without him, feeling his presence where he no longer was.
She had the revelation one Sunday that while the other instruments played for everyone the violen played for her alone .
He sank into the rocking chair, the same one in which Rebecca had sat during the early days of the house to give embroidery lessons, and in which Amaranta had played Chinese checkers with Colonel Gerineldo Marquez, and in which Amarana Ursula had sewn the tiny clothing for the child, and in that flash of lucidity he became aware that he was unable to bear in his soul the crushing weight of so much past.
Nobody deserves your tears, but whoever deserves them will not make you cry.
Both described at the same time how it was always March there and always Monday, and then they understood that José Arcadio Buendía was not as crazy as the family said, but that he was the only one who had enough lucidity to sense the truth of the fact that time also stumbled and had accidents and could therefore splinter and leave an eternalized fragment in a room.
Where we are as a nation is due to having an openness to the people of the world. It's incredibly important. I firmly believe that we cannot shut our borders to immigrants. I think a fair and just immigration policy is good for our country and good for our society.
Man's unconscious... contains all the patterns of life and behaviour inherited from his ancestors, so that every human child, prior to consciousness, is possessed of a potential system of adapted psychic functioning.
I did not do it. Yet now I wish I had.’ He turned to face the hall, that sea of pale faces. ‘I wish I had enough poison for you all. You make me sorry that I am not the monster you would have me be, yet there it is. I am innocent, but I will get no justice here.
Europe today is the most secular region in the world. Europe is the only region in the world experiencing population decline. Wherever you turn today the more religious the community, the larger on average are their families.
He who can make distinction in God without number or quantity, knows that the three persons of the Trinity are one God.
We enter into solitude first of all to meet our Lord and to be with him and him alone. Only in the context of grace can we face our sin; only in the place of healing do we dare to show our wounds; only with a singleminded attention to Christ can we give up our clinging fears and face our own true nature.
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