- Florentino Ariza: Please allow me to wipe the slate clean. Age has no reality except in the physical world. The essence of a human being is resistant to the passage of time. Our inner lives are eternal, which is to say that our spirits remain as youthful and vigorous as when we were in full bloom. Think of love as a state of grace, not the means to anything, but the alpha and omega. An end in itself.
- Florentino Ariza: [closing scene, in bed together, but clothed] I love you, my crowned goddess. We're going to stay like this.
- Fermina Urbino: You can't mean it.
- Florentino Ariza: From the moment I was born, I have never said anything I did not mean.
- Fermina Urbino: [exhales, almost trembling] And how long do you... you think we can... stay like this?
- Florentino Ariza: Forever.
- Fermina Urbino: Forever?
- Florentino Ariza: [cut to view of the sun-lit boat anchored in the midst of the river] After 53 years, seven months and 11 days and night, my heart was at last fulfilled. And I discovered, to my joy, that it is life and not death that has no limits.
- Fermina Urbino: The only thing that hurts me is that I don't have enough strength to give you the beating that you deserve for being so insolent and evil-minded. But you will leave this house right now and I swear to you on my mother's grave that you will not set foot in it again as long as I live. Life crippled that poor man 50 years ago, because he was too young and now you want to do it because we are too old.
- Florentino Ariza: [Surprising her in her house] Fermina I have waited for this opportunity for 51 years, nine months and four days. That is... how long I have loved you from the first moment I cast eyes on you un... until now.
- Fermina Urbino: Florentino Ariza... get out of here! Get out!
- Fermina Urbino: [cut to Ariza reading a letter from Fermina while we hear her words:] Florentino Ariza, you are a dreadful, insensitive human being. How dare you enter my house on the day my beloved husband died and utter such monstrous, ridiculous sentiments? You have put me in a mortal rage, which has caused me to think about you without wanting to. Do you understand? I do not want to think about you. Stay out of my life.
- Dr. Juvenal Urbino: I love you above all else. More than anyone else in the world. The important thing in marriage is not happiness but stability.
- Fermina Urbino: And love. Nothing is more difficult than love.
- Ricardo Lighthouse: Why are you so successful with women?
- Florentino Ariza: Um... because they see in me someone... guilty. In need of love. Someone who will not harm them. Hmmph. My heart has more rooms than a whore house, Ricardo.
- Ricardo Lighthouse: What number are you on now?
- Florentino Ariza: Prepare yourself for a shock. I'm on number 622.
- Ricardo Lighthouse: Impossible.
- Florentino Ariza: I speak the truth - 622.
- Florentino Ariza: [updating his diary of conquests] Number 2: The widow Nazareth... Wouldn't stop talking about her dead husband... Very disturbing !
- Florentino Ariza: Someone has died.
- America Vicuña: [naked, in a hammock] It's Pentecost.
- Florentino Ariza: No no, it must be a very big fish if they are ringing the cathedral bells.
- America Vicuña: Florentino, lay down. Let's do it again. Please?
- Tránsito Ariza: Enjoy your pain. Take advantage of it now while you are young. And suffer, my son, suffer all you can, because these things don't last your whole life.
- Escolástica: Fermina, say yes! Fermina, I may not be married, but I know about love. Even if you're dying of fear, even if you are sorry later, because whatever you do, you will be sorry all the rest of your life if you say no. Believe me, I know what I'm talking about.
- Florentino - Teen: I want to eat the tender flesh of every word she has written to me over and over.
- Hildebranda: I just know that we must learn to be happy without love. And in spite of it.
- Fermina Daza: Happy without love?
- Hildebranda: Yes. Happy without love.
- Lotario Thugut: So which one is it going to be?
- Florentino - Teen: No no, my beloved is returning soon. I have to keep myself pure. And I will only lose my virginity for love.
- Lotario Thugut: That is such a bad idea.
- Dr. Juvenal Urbino: Do you like music?
- Fermina Daza: What is the point of that question?
- Dr. Juvenal Urbino: Music is important for one's health.
- Florentino - Teen: If the suffering of your own heart doesn't kill you, the ever-recurring civil war might. And there is the disease that comes between the burst of bloodshed, the deadly choking embrace of cholera.
- Hildebranda: My boots are killing me. I'll have to take them off.
- Dr. Juvenal Urbino: I'll take off mine too. Let's see who finishes first. Oh! You won.
- Hildebranda: But now I realize it wasn't my boots at all. It is this wire cage under my skirt.
- Dr. Juvenal Urbino: Hmm, nothing could be simpler. Take it off.
- Dr. Juvenal Urbino: I told your daughter that she is like a rose.
- Lorenzo Daza: True enough, but one with too many thorns.
- Hildebranda: He's very beautiful. When he covered his eyes and I saw his perfect teeth between those rosy lips, I wanted, oooh, eeeoh. I wanted to devour him with kisses.
- Fermina Daza: What a whore you are.
- Florentino Ariza: I am nothing. I will not heal - not for all time. I'm struck by the lightning of love and burned beyond repair. She's a splinter that cannot be pulled out. She's part of me, everywhere I go. Everywhere, she is.
- Fermina Urbino: I think my sense of smell is overdeveloped.
- Dr. Juvenal Urbino: Well, that would be because your olfactory organ's are...
- Fermina Urbino: I'm sorry I mentioned it.
- Fermina Urbino: Turn off the light. I want - absolute darkness. You forget, Doctor, this is the first time I've - slept with a stranger. Do you love me?
- Dr. Juvenal Urbino: Don't be frightened. We are man and wife. I want you to love every - every moment of our honeymoon. I can't wait to show you Paris. It is a - a city of love.
- Florentino Ariza: Women. Number one - unknown lady in boat: the first wondrous explosion. Number two - the Widow Nazaret: while doing it, only talks of her dead husband. Number three - Esmeralda Arau: a skinny, wiggling tadpole who'd walk me through the ferns. Number four - Maria Estevez: very dangerous. We were so close to the street, anyone could have heard us. This is the cure for the pain of Fermina.
- Fermina Urbino: [in their wedding bed] I've never been able to understand how your thing works. How ugly it is. Even uglier than a woman's thing.
- Dr. Juvenal Urbino: Yes.
- Fermina Urbino: Besides, I think it has - too many bits on it.
- Dr. Juvenal Urbino: That's astounding. My doctoral thesis was on the advantage...
- Fermina Urbino: I don't want a medical lesson.
- Dr. Juvenal Urbino: No. No. This is going to be a lesson in love.
- Widow Nazaret: Help me, help me. My dead husband always undid my laces. Help me, please. Help me.
- [Florentino helps]
- Widow Nazaret: I've never been in the same bed with any other man - ay - other than my dead husband. He's in his coffin now under the ground. I'm so happy! I'm happy!
- Don Leo: You take after your father. You never knew him, my brother Pius. You know what his last words were? He said, "The only regret I have in dying is that I do not die for love."
- Florentino Ariza: He said that? He really said that?
- Don Leo: On his deathbed. Nevertheless, all his life he fucked everything in sight.
- Don Leo: This is not a business letter. This is a love letter.
- Florentino Ariza: Love is the only thing that interests me.
- Don Leo: Why do you want to be rich?
- Florentino Ariza: So that I can be someone in society, I need - I need to be worthy of a great lady I cannot stop loving.
- Don Leo: Who is she? Married?
- Florentino Ariza: Yes, but I'm waiting for her husband to die.
- Don Leo: Is he old?
- Florentino Ariza: No, but I'll wait for however long it takes.
- Dr. Juvenal Urbino: Do you like music?
- Florentino Ariza: I like the music of Carlos Gardel.
- Dr. Juvenal Urbino: I see. Popular music. Yes, but we must keep performing the best music in our city. We must import the greatest artists from Europe.
- Florentino Ariza: Maybe you should loosen your bodice. It will help you to feel more... comfortable, you know? May I help?
- [he helps]
- Sara Noriega: Tomorrow we do it in bed!
- Tránsito Ariza: The only disease you ever had was cholera.
- Florentino Ariza: No, Mama. You confused cholera with love.
- Florentino Ariza: Tell me, how would you define love?
- Sara Noriega: Love? Love is - love is everything we do naked. Spiritual love from the waist up, physical love from the waist down.
- Florentino Ariza: Yes, divided love.
- Sara Noriega: That could be a poem: "Divided Love."
- Florentino Ariza: Yes, it could be.
- Sara Noriega: Let's write it together, a poem on divided love.
- Fermina Urbino: And you, Hildebranda, what happened to your married man?
- Hildebranda: He stayed married.
- Florentino Ariza: It's been over a year and not a whisper, not a hint. Nobody knows where she is. I have made myself believe that if she were dead I would have heard. All I can do to keep myself sane is to follow my routine: 472 - Maria Florida: sells flowers in the market. 499 - Josephine Triola: I - I don't exactly know who she was. 544 -Galetia Fernandez: nothing memorable to report. Routine is like rust.
- Fermina Urbino: I thought at least you - you'd be a man and deny the whole thing. I thought at least you'd - you'd lie to me.
- Fermina Urbino: We have nothing in common except memories. The young people we were are banished. That was all an illusion.
- Florentino Ariza: Not for me.
- Fermina Urbino: The only thing that hurts me is that I don't have enough strength to give you the beating that you deserve for being so insolent and evil-minded.