You're the only person I've ever met who can stand a bookstore as long as I can.
Yunior uses this line to describe Flaca, one of his girlfriends. Instead of being like all his other girlfriends (uneducated, uninterested in books), Flaca is different. She likes to read and accompanies Yunior to the bookstore. He is impressed by this and admits that Flaca is not the usual girl; finding one like her is very difficult.
This part of the story allows the readers to see deeper into Yunior's character. He may be harsh, impolite, unfaithful, not the perfect student or anything close to that, but deep inside he likes to learn and to find ways to improve himself and his life.
The half-life of love is forever.
Yunior dedicates this phrase to his ex. She left him after reading all his emails and finding out that he was cheating on her. The breakup really affected Yunior; it was his best relationship and now he lost that too. After six years of unsuccessfully trying to forget her and find another girl, Yunior finally understands that his love for her will never end. Or, in other words, he understands that it would take him forever to forget her.
And that’s when I know it’s over. As soon as you start thinking about the beginning, it’s the end.
Yunior realizes this when he enters the Cave of the Jaguar. Hurt by the rejection of Magda, he enters the cave and suddenly he starts recalling memories of the first time he met Magda. He recalls the place he met her, the clothes she had on, and suddenly he realized it was all over; she was never going to get back to him. Hurt by this realization, he leaves the cave crying.
But back then, in those first days, I was so alone that every day was like eating my own heart.
Yasmin describes how she felt when she first came to the U.S. Lonely, scared for her life, with no food on the table, every day that passed felt like total misery. Living in small rooms with many other girls, who would usually fight with each other and steal money from each other, Yasmin found out that she couldn't be friend with them. She was different in her manners, and this left her alone, with no real friend to talk to. She wanted to go back to the Dominican Republic so badly, that every day she had to fight with herself to convince herself that later the life would get better.
I’m like everybody else: weak, full of mistakes, but basically good.
This is how Yunior describes himself: weak, because he can't resist the temptation of cheating on his girlfriends. Full of mistakes, because even that he is punished for his affairs, he never learns these mistakes and continues to make even more mistakes in the future. He says that he is basically good because he believes that other guys are worse than him; for example his brother, friends, and father, and by being not as bad as them he considers himself to automatically be basically good.
This is what I know: people’s hopes go on forever.
Yasmin says this after some people came to ask for the house she and Ramon just bought. She knows that people's hopes go on forever because she is one of these people. Since the day she came to the US, she kept hoping that her life would get better. She found a place to live but still, she wasn't happy and hoped to live somewhere better in the future. She found a job but wasn't happy with her either, so she hoped for a better one in the future. Finally, she bought with Ramon her own house, but still, when the house became hers she hoped that in the future the house would become better.
