How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #7
According to what they told me years later, they had begun by looking for him at Maria Alejandrina Cervantes's place, where they had been with him until two o'clock. That fact, like many others, was not reported in the brief. Actually, Santiago Nasar was no longer there at the time the twins said they went looking for him, because we'd left on a round of serenades, but in any case, it wasn't certain that they'd gone. "They never would have left here," Maria Alejandrina Cervantes told me, and knowing her so well, I never doubted it. (3.6)
Somehow, we feel that it's not a coincidence that Marquez makes the only person who seems like they are actually telling the truth a prostitute. We're not saying that prostitutes are liars, but that the whole notion of an honest prostitute is a bit ironic because society generally frowns upon the oldest profession. However, Maria Alejandrina Cervantes seems like the only person not caught up in the web of deceit.
Quote #8
Before stepping onto land, they took off their shoes and went barefoot through the streets up to the hilltop in the burning dust of noon, pulling out strands of hair by the roots and wailing loudly with such high-pitched shrieks that they seemed to be shouts of joy. I watched them pass from Magdalena Oliver's balcony, and I remember thinking that distress like theirs could only be put on in order to hide other, greater shames. (4.19)
There's a heckuva lot of sketchy behavior happening in this novel, but Bayardo and his family take the cake. Do you think that the sisters are actually happy? Or are they hiding something even worse than a lost virginity, which we all know is punishable by death? While many of the townspeople's lies seem to be made in order to maintain the peace of the town, Bayardo and his family are strangers. So what's their motivation?
Quote #9
What we discovered inside seemed to be a woman's natural items for hygiene and beauty, and I only learned their real use when Angela Vicario told me many years later which things were the old wives' artifices she had been instructed in so as to deceive her husband. (4.23)
This scene is a great warning, because it shows us that items that could be perceived as completely innocent can hide illicit meanings. It's basically this novel's "trust no one," moment.