One Hundred Years of Solitude

by

Gabriel García Márquez

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The matriarch of the Buendía family: wife of José Arcadio Buendía and mother to Colonel Aureliano Buendía, José Arcadio (I), and Amaranta. She is a hard worker, dedicated to the development of her business making candy animals and other confections. She is the character most afraid of the warning that intermarrying will produce a child with the tail of a pig, a fear she spreads for generations. She is also one of the characters who can most clearly see the cycles the family goes through, recognizing the traits associated with the names Aureliano and José Arcadio. She becomes senile in her old age, but lives to be over 120 years old.

Úrsula Iguarán Quotes in One Hundred Years of Solitude

The One Hundred Years of Solitude quotes below are all either spoken by Úrsula Iguarán or refer to Úrsula Iguarán . For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
The Circularity of Time Theme Icon
).
Chapter 1  Quotes

“We will not leave,” she said. “We will stay here, because we have had a son here.”

“We still have not had a death,” he said. “A person does not belong to a place until there is someone dead under the ground.”

Úrsula replied with a soft firmness:

“If I have to die for the rest of you to stay here, I will die.”

Related Characters: José Arcadio Buendía, Úrsula Iguarán
Page Number: 13
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 2  Quotes

They were afraid that those two healthy products of two races that had interbred over the centuries would suffer the shame of breeding iguanas. There had already been a horrible precedent. An aunt of Úrsula’s, married to an uncle of José Arcadio Buendía, had a son who went through life wearing loose, baggy trousers and who bled to death after having lived forty-two years in the purest state of virginity, for he had been born and had grown up with a cartilaginous tail in the shape of a corkscrew and with a small tuft of hair on the tip. A pig’s tail that was never to be seen by any woman and that cost him his life when a butcher friend did him the favor of chopping it off with his cleaver. José Arcadio Buendía, with the whimsy of his nineteen years, resolved the problem with a single phrase: “I don’t care if I have piglets as long as they can talk.”

Related Characters: José Arcadio Buendía, Úrsula Iguarán
Related Symbols: Tail of a Pig
Page Number: 20
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 7 Quotes

As soon as José Arcadio closed the bedroom door the sounds of a pistol shot echoed through the house. A trickle of blood came out under the door, crossed the living room, went out into the street, continued on in a straight line across the uneven terraces, went down steps and climbed over curbs, passed along the Street of the Turks, turned a corner to the right and another to the left, made a right angle at the Buendía house, went in under the closed door, crossed through the parlor, hugging the walls so as not to stain the rugs, went on to the other living room, made a wide curve to avoid the dining-room table, went along the porch with the begonias, and passed without being seen under Amaranta’s chair as she gave an arithmetic lesson to Aureliano José, and went through the pantry and came out in the kitchen where Úrsula was getting ready to crack thirty-six eggs to make bread.

“Holy Mother of God!” Úrsula shouted.

Related Characters: Úrsula Iguarán , José Arcadio (I)
Page Number: 132
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 10  Quotes

From then on he was never sure who was who. Even when they grew up and life made them different, Úrsula still wondered if they themselves might not have made a mistake in some moment of their intricate game of confusion and had become changed forever.

Related Characters: Úrsula Iguarán , Aureliano Segundo, José Arcadio Segundo
Related Symbols: Names
Page Number: 182
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 12  Quotes

“Quite the opposite,” she said, “I’ve never felt better.”

She had just finished saying it when Fernanda felt a delicate wind of light pull the sheets out of her hands and open them up wide. Amaranta felt a mysterious trembling in the lace on her petticoats and she tried to grasp the sheet so that she would not fall down at the instant in which Remedios the Beauty began to rise. Úrsula, almost blind at the time, was the only person who was sufficiently calm to identify the nature of that determined wind and she left the sheets to the mercy of the light as she watched Remedios the Beauty waving good-bye in the midst of the flapping sheets that rose up with her, abandoning with her the environment of beetles and dahlias and passing through the air with her as four o’clock in the afternoon came to an end, and they were lost forever with her in the upper atmosphere where not even the highest-flying birds of memory could reach her.

Related Characters: Úrsula Iguarán , Amaranta, Remedios the Beauty, Fernanda del Carpio
Page Number: 236
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 13  Quotes

She did not tell anyone about it because it would have been a public recognition of her uselessness. She concentrated on a silent schooling in the distances of things and people’s voices, so that she would still be able to see with her memory what the shadows of her cataracts no longer allowed her to.

Related Characters: Úrsula Iguarán
Page Number: 246
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 14  Quotes

Úrsula did not get up again after the nine nights of mourning for Amaranta, Santa Sofia de la Piedad took care of her. She took her meals to her bedroom and annatto water for her to wash in and kept her up to date on everything that happened in Macondo. Aureliano Segundo visited her frequently and he brought her clothing which she would place beside the bed along with the things most indispensible for daily life, so that in a short time she had built up a world within reach of her hand.

Related Characters: Úrsula Iguarán , Amaranta, Santa Sofia de la Piedad, Aureliano Segundo
Page Number: 283
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 16  Quotes

Úrsula was their most amusing plaything. They looked upon her as a big, broken-down doll that they carried back and forth from one corner to another wrapped in colored cloth and with her face painted with soot and annatto, and once they were on the point of plucking out her eyes with the pruning shears as they had done with the frogs. Nothing gave them as much excitement as the wanderings of her mind. Something, indeed, must have happened to her mind during the third year of the rain, for she was gradually losing her sense of reality and confusing present time with remote periods in her life to the point where, on one occasion, she spent three days weeping deeply over the death of Petronila Iguarán, her great-grandmother, buried for over a century.

Related Characters: Úrsula Iguarán , Amaranta Úrsula, Aureliano
Page Number: 327
Explanation and Analysis:
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Úrsula Iguarán Quotes in One Hundred Years of Solitude

The One Hundred Years of Solitude quotes below are all either spoken by Úrsula Iguarán or refer to Úrsula Iguarán . For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
The Circularity of Time Theme Icon
).
Chapter 1  Quotes

“We will not leave,” she said. “We will stay here, because we have had a son here.”

“We still have not had a death,” he said. “A person does not belong to a place until there is someone dead under the ground.”

Úrsula replied with a soft firmness:

“If I have to die for the rest of you to stay here, I will die.”

Related Characters: José Arcadio Buendía, Úrsula Iguarán
Page Number: 13
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 2  Quotes

They were afraid that those two healthy products of two races that had interbred over the centuries would suffer the shame of breeding iguanas. There had already been a horrible precedent. An aunt of Úrsula’s, married to an uncle of José Arcadio Buendía, had a son who went through life wearing loose, baggy trousers and who bled to death after having lived forty-two years in the purest state of virginity, for he had been born and had grown up with a cartilaginous tail in the shape of a corkscrew and with a small tuft of hair on the tip. A pig’s tail that was never to be seen by any woman and that cost him his life when a butcher friend did him the favor of chopping it off with his cleaver. José Arcadio Buendía, with the whimsy of his nineteen years, resolved the problem with a single phrase: “I don’t care if I have piglets as long as they can talk.”

Related Characters: José Arcadio Buendía, Úrsula Iguarán
Related Symbols: Tail of a Pig
Page Number: 20
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 7 Quotes

As soon as José Arcadio closed the bedroom door the sounds of a pistol shot echoed through the house. A trickle of blood came out under the door, crossed the living room, went out into the street, continued on in a straight line across the uneven terraces, went down steps and climbed over curbs, passed along the Street of the Turks, turned a corner to the right and another to the left, made a right angle at the Buendía house, went in under the closed door, crossed through the parlor, hugging the walls so as not to stain the rugs, went on to the other living room, made a wide curve to avoid the dining-room table, went along the porch with the begonias, and passed without being seen under Amaranta’s chair as she gave an arithmetic lesson to Aureliano José, and went through the pantry and came out in the kitchen where Úrsula was getting ready to crack thirty-six eggs to make bread.

“Holy Mother of God!” Úrsula shouted.

Related Characters: Úrsula Iguarán , José Arcadio (I)
Page Number: 132
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 10  Quotes

From then on he was never sure who was who. Even when they grew up and life made them different, Úrsula still wondered if they themselves might not have made a mistake in some moment of their intricate game of confusion and had become changed forever.

Related Characters: Úrsula Iguarán , Aureliano Segundo, José Arcadio Segundo
Related Symbols: Names
Page Number: 182
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 12  Quotes

“Quite the opposite,” she said, “I’ve never felt better.”

She had just finished saying it when Fernanda felt a delicate wind of light pull the sheets out of her hands and open them up wide. Amaranta felt a mysterious trembling in the lace on her petticoats and she tried to grasp the sheet so that she would not fall down at the instant in which Remedios the Beauty began to rise. Úrsula, almost blind at the time, was the only person who was sufficiently calm to identify the nature of that determined wind and she left the sheets to the mercy of the light as she watched Remedios the Beauty waving good-bye in the midst of the flapping sheets that rose up with her, abandoning with her the environment of beetles and dahlias and passing through the air with her as four o’clock in the afternoon came to an end, and they were lost forever with her in the upper atmosphere where not even the highest-flying birds of memory could reach her.

Related Characters: Úrsula Iguarán , Amaranta, Remedios the Beauty, Fernanda del Carpio
Page Number: 236
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 13  Quotes

She did not tell anyone about it because it would have been a public recognition of her uselessness. She concentrated on a silent schooling in the distances of things and people’s voices, so that she would still be able to see with her memory what the shadows of her cataracts no longer allowed her to.

Related Characters: Úrsula Iguarán
Page Number: 246
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 14  Quotes

Úrsula did not get up again after the nine nights of mourning for Amaranta, Santa Sofia de la Piedad took care of her. She took her meals to her bedroom and annatto water for her to wash in and kept her up to date on everything that happened in Macondo. Aureliano Segundo visited her frequently and he brought her clothing which she would place beside the bed along with the things most indispensible for daily life, so that in a short time she had built up a world within reach of her hand.

Related Characters: Úrsula Iguarán , Amaranta, Santa Sofia de la Piedad, Aureliano Segundo
Page Number: 283
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 16  Quotes

Úrsula was their most amusing plaything. They looked upon her as a big, broken-down doll that they carried back and forth from one corner to another wrapped in colored cloth and with her face painted with soot and annatto, and once they were on the point of plucking out her eyes with the pruning shears as they had done with the frogs. Nothing gave them as much excitement as the wanderings of her mind. Something, indeed, must have happened to her mind during the third year of the rain, for she was gradually losing her sense of reality and confusing present time with remote periods in her life to the point where, on one occasion, she spent three days weeping deeply over the death of Petronila Iguarán, her great-grandmother, buried for over a century.

Related Characters: Úrsula Iguarán , Amaranta Úrsula, Aureliano
Page Number: 327
Explanation and Analysis: