Quotes from Roberto Bolano

Forget about it," he said. "Sell it to a philosophy quarterly or an urban anthropology journal, or write a fucking script if you want and let Spike Lee shoot the motherfucker, but it's not going to run in any magazine of mine.

I don't have much time, I have to haul corpses. I don't have much time, I have to breath, eat, drink, sleep. I don't have much time, I have to keep the gears meshing. I don't have much time, I'm busy living. I don't have much time, I'm busy dying.

Everything's over, I thought. I felt rested, I'm home, I have lots to do. When I sat up in bed, though, all I did was start to cry like a fool, for no apparent reason.

I remember that a couple, both tall and thin, turned away from a painting and peered over as if I might be an ex-lover or a living (and unfinished) painting that had just got news of the painter's death. I know I walked out without looking back and that I walked for a long time until I realized I wasn't crying, but that it was raining and I was soaked. That night I didn't sleep at all.

That night I didn't sleep a wink, said Norton in her letter, and it occurred to me to call Morini. It was late, it was rude to bother him at that hour, it was rash of me, it was a terrible imposition, but I called him. I remember I dialed his number and immediately I turned out the light in the room, as if so long as I was in the dark Morini couldn't see my face. To my surprise, he picked up the phone instantly.

Amalfitano remembered a time when he believed that nothing happened by chance, everything happened for some reason, but when was that time? he couldn't remember, all he could remember was that at some point thiw was what he believed...

then he sat on his bed and for a fraction of a second the shadows retreated and he had a fleeting glimpse of reality. He felt dizzy and he closed his eyes. Without knowing it he fell asleep.

Hay una literatura para cuando estás aburrido. Abunda. Hay una literatura para cuando estás calmado. Esta es la mejor literatura, creo yo. También hay una literatura para cuando estás triste. Y hay una literatura para cuando estás alegre. Hay una literatura para cuando estás ávido de conocimiento. Y hay una literatura para cuando estás desesperado. Esta ultima es la que quisieron hacer Ulises Lima y Belano.

O gözler baÅŸar?, mutluluk, doyum isteÄŸi, zafer beklentisiyle bakan gözlerdi, bunlar sadece gelecekte olan ÅŸeylerdir, en iyisi hiç beklememek çünkü hiçbir zaman gelmez beklenenler.

Silence is love just as your raspy voice is a bird.

Uno tiene que conocer gente de todas las clases, a veces es necesario empaparse de realidad

Among other things, my own experience has led me to believe that American naivete can sometimes be more than it seems; it can hide something we Europeans can't or don't want to understand.

His novel or book of poems, decent, adequate, arises not from an exercise of style or will, as the poor unfortunate believes, but as the result of an exercise of concealment. There must be many books, many lovely pines, to shield from hungry eyes the book that really matters, the wretched cave of our misfortune, the magic flower of winter!

One day I'll die of cancer.

I'm American. Why didn't I say I was African American? Because I'm in a foreign country? But can I really consider myself to be in a foreign country when I could go walking back to my own country right now if I wanted, and it wouldn't even take very long? Does this mean that in some places I'm American and in some places I'm African American and in other places, by logical extension, I'm nobody?

Does this mean that in some places I'm American and in some places I'm African American and in other places, by logical extension, I'm nobody?

And quick strokes of other less intimate adventures Flashed in her wounded eyes like fireflies.

Once again reality has proved that no particular group has a monopoly over demagogy, dogmatism, and ignorance.

nunca serás un hombre sabio, vaya, ni siquiera un hombre razonablemente inteligente, pero el amor y tu sangre te hicieron dar un paso, incierto pero necesario, en medio de la noche, y el amor que guió ese paso te salva

The night was dark as pitch or coal. Stupid expressions, thought Pereda. European nights might be pitch-dark or coal-black, but not American nights, which are dark like a void, where there's nothing to hold on to, no shelter from the elements, just empty, storm-whipped space, above and below.

Everything that begins as comedy ends as a comic monologue, but we aren't laughing anymore.

The style was strange. The writing was clear and sometimes even transparent, but the way the stories followed one after another didn't lead anywhere: all that was left were the children, their parents, the animals, some neighbors, and in the end, all that was really left was nature, a nature that dissolved little by little in a boiling cauldron until it vanished completely.

Everything that begins as comedy ends as tragicomedy.

I'm an educated man: the prisons I know are subtle ones. And of course poetry and prison have always been neighbors. And yet it's melancholia that's the source of my attraction.