Quotes from Roberto Bolano

On the ride back to the hotel, they lost the sense of being in a hostile environment, although hostile wasn't the word, an environment whose language they refused to recognize, an environment that existed on some parallel plane where they couldn't make their presence felt, imprint themselves, unless they raised their voices, unless they argued, something they had no intention of doing.

Nothing very expensive, as you can see, though when you're poor anything that isn't free is expensive.

Soñé que Baudelaire hacía el amor con una sombra en una habitación donde se había cometido un crimen. Pero a Baudelaire no le importaba. Siempre es lo mismo, decía

últimamente me noto una tendencia preocupante a aceptar las cosas tal como son.

Sometimes I get the sense that it's all "internal"... Maybe that's why I lived alone and did nothing for three years ... (The man hardly ever washed, he didn't need a typewriter, all he had to do was sit in that shabby armchair for things to flee of their own accord)

Above the street, like a hanged man, swings the spot-lit sign of the neighborhood's best restaurant, closed a long time ago.

among them the nameless girl, with her guillotine mouth, strolling through the past and the future like a movie face.

Artaud decía que escribir era una marranada, que todos los escritores eran unos cerdos, sobre todo los de ahora. Lo suscribo. Sin embargo, pese a todo, continúo admirando a los jóvenes escritores. De la misma forma que admiro a los jóvenes boxeadores

1 de enero Hoy me di cuenta de que lo que escribí ayer en realidad lo escribí hoy: todo lo del treintaiuno de diciembre lo escribí el uno de enero, es decir hoy. Lo que escribo hoy en realidad lo escribo mañana, que para mí será hoy y ayer, y también de alguna manera mañana: un día invisible. Pero sin exagerar.

Pronto comprendió que sólo existían dos maneras de acceder a él: mediante la violencia abierta, que no venía al caso pues era un hombre apacible y nervioso al que repugnaba hasta la vista de la sangre, o mediante la literatura, que es una forma de violencia soterrada y que concede respetabilidad y en ciertos países jóvenes y sensibles es uno de los disfraces de la escala social.

Quiere decir que cree que Kelly está muerta?, le grité. Más o menos, dijo sin perder un ápice de compostura. ¿Cómo que más o menos?, grité. O se está muerto o no se está muerto, chingados! En México uno puede estar más o menos muerto, me contestó muy seriamente.

People see what they want to see and what people want to see never has anything to do with the truth. People are cowards to the last breath. I'm telling you between you and me: the human being, broadly speaking, is the closest thing there is to a rat.

To Amalfitano, Jordi seemed a shy and formal boy. Rosa liked his silence, which she mistook for thoughtfulness when it was really just a symptom of the confusion raging in his head.

There were the usual deaths, yes, those to be expected, people who started off celebrating and ended up killing each other, uncinematic deaths, deaths from the realm of folklore, not modernity: deaths that didn't scare anybody.

E incluso cabía una opción peor: que Cesárea hubiera torcido la realidad conscientemente.

We're two of a kind, that donkey and me, said Caridad in a dreamy voice. Foreigners in our own land. I would have liked to tell her she was wrong, to point out that in the eyes of the law, I was the only foreigner, but I kept my mouth shut. I put my arm gently around her waist and waited. Caridad might have been foreign to God, to the police and even to herself, but she wasn't foreign to me. I could have said the same for the donkey.

Canetti e creio que também Borges, dois homens tão diferentes, disseram que assim como o mar era o símbolo ou o espelho dos ingleses, o bosque era a metáfora onde viviam os alemães.

sandanista or somocista the police is always the police

Una semana sin ver a Maciste se me antojaba una eternidad. Pero cuando intentaba imaginar una vida completa junto a él no veía nada: una imagen en blanco, la pared de un cuarto deshabitado, amnesia, lobotomía, mi cuerpo partido, hecho pedazos.

The sickness is to sit at the base of the lighthouse staring into nothing. The lighthouse is black, the sea is black, the writer's jacket is also black.

Si el Paraíso, para ser Paraíso, propicia un vasto Infierno, el deber del poeta es convertir el Paraíso en Infierno

Sucedió algo que a riesgo de ser cursi me atrevería a llamar maravilloso

It would be interesting to remember the dreams I had here, at the Del Mar, more than ten years ago. I probably dreamed about girls and punishment, the way all boys that age do.

Uno tiene la obligación moral de ser responsable de sus actos y también de sus palabras e incluso de sus silencios, sí, de sus silencios, porque también los silencios ascienden al cielo y los oye Dios y sólo Dios los comprende y los juzga, así que mucho cuidado con los silencios