Quotes from Roberto Bolano

Yo soy de los que creen que el ser humano está condenado de antemano a la derrota, a la derrota sin apelaciones, pero que hay que salir y dar la pelea y darla, además, de la mejor forma posible, de cara y limpiamente, sin pedir cuartel (porque además no te lo darán) e intentar caer como un valiente, y que eso es nuestra victoria.

since virtue, once recognized in a flash, has no shine and makes its home in a dark cave amid cave dwellers, some dangerous indeed)

Besides Archimboldi, there was one thing Morini, Pelletier, and Espinoza had in common. All three had iron wills. Actually, they had one other thing in common, but we'll get to that later.

No ha visto usted nunca a esos pájaros ridículos que bailan hasta la extenuación para conquistar a la hembra? Así era Arturo Belano, un pavorreal presumido y tonto. Y el realismo visceral, su agotadora danza de amor hacia mi. Pero el problema era que yo ya no lo amaba. Se puede conquistar a una muchacha con un poema, pero no se la puede retener con un poema. Vaya, ni siquiera con un movimiento poético.

Ay Ulises Lima, escribía todo el tiempo (es lo que más recuerdo de él) en los márgenes de los libros que sustraía y en papeles sueltos que solía perder. Y nunca escribía poemas, escribía versos que luego con suerte ensamblaba en largos poemas extraños.

prefiero el ritual de la nada.

La actitud de ellos me molestaba. Era básicamente cómo si me menospreciaran por mi aspecto físico. Era como si pensaran: A esta chava no le puede gustar este pobre desgraciado sin dientes. Cómo si los dientes tuvieran algo que ver con el amor.

Of what is lost, irretrievably lost, all I wish to recover is the daily availability of my writing, lines capable of grasping me by the hair and lifting me up when I'm at the end of my strength.

descalzo en medio del sueño que se mueve desde nuestros corazones hasta nuestras necesidades

but inside she could feel herself starting to scream, or rather, she could feel, and see, the diving line between not-screaming and screaming. It was like opening your eyes in a cave bigger than the earth

The moon is fat and the night air is so pure it seems edible.

The truth is we never stop being children, terrible children covered in sores and knotty veins and tumors and age spots, but ultimately children.

Isn't reality an insatiable AIDS-riddled whore?

One never knows anything about one's father. A father ... is a passageway immersed in the deepest darkness, where we stumble blindly seeking a way out.

Literature is a vast forest and the masterpieces are the lakes, the towering trees or strange trees, the lovely, eloquent flowers, the hidden caves, but a forest is also made up of ordinary trees, patches of grass, puddles, clinging vines, mushrooms, and little wildflowers.

In dreams, as in the Gospels, one usually possesses the gift of tongues.

Wonderful, wonderful, yet again the sword of fate severs the head from the hydra of chance.

Poetry is the one thing that isn't contaminated, the one thing that isn't part of the game.

Coincidence, if you'll permit the simile, is like the manifestation of God at every moment on our planet. A senseless God making senseless gestures at his senseless creatures.

Only poetry isn't shit.

With every day that passes I am more convinced that the act of writing is a concious act of humility.

I get the idea perfectly, Mickey," said Archimboldi, thinking all the while that this man was not only irritating but ridiculous, with the particular ridiculousness of self-dramatizers and poor fools convinced they've been present at a decisive moment in history, when it's common knowledge, thought Archimboldi, that history, which is a simple whore, has no decisive moments but is a proliferation of instants, brief interludes that vie with one another in monstrousness.

One is prepared for friendship, not for friends.

posterity was a vaudeville joke audible only to those with front-row seats...