Quotes from Roberto Bolano

Demasiado bonito para que durara, ya saben, los espíritus singulares no soportan tanto amor, tanta perfección encontrada por casualidad

And I thought:History is like a horror story.

Qué lástima que pase el tiempo ¿verdad?, qué lástima que nos muramos y que nos hagamos viejos y que las cosas buenas se vayan alejando de nosotros al galope.

When you know something, you know it, and when you don't, you'd better learn. And in the meantime, you should keep quiet, or at least speak only when what you say will advance the learning process.

Life is shit, thought Pelletier in astonishment, all of it.

You run risks. That's the plain truth. You run risks and, even in the most unlikely places, you are subject to destiny's whims.

The American mirror, said the voice, the sad American mirror of wealth and poverty and constant useless metamorphosis, the mirror that sails and whose sails are pain.

That's a pretty story,' said Afanasievna as she let go of Ansky's genitals. 'A pity I'm too old and have seen to much to believe it.' It has nothing to do with belief,' said Ansky, 'it has to do with understanding, and then changing.

I'm seventeen years old, my name is Juan García Madero, and I'm in my first semester of law school. I wanted to study literature, not law, but my uncle insisted, and in the end I gave in. I'm an orphan, and someday I'll be a lawyer. That's what I told my aunt and uncle, and then I shut myself in my room and cried all night.

No one pays attention to these killings, but the secret of the world is hidden in them.

Isn't reality an insatiable AIDS-riddled whore?

I didn't hit her, man, what happened was that Maria was obsessed with the Marquis de Sade and wanted to try the spanking thing," said Luscious Skin. "That's very Maria," said Pancho. "She takes her reading seriously.

I am dying now, but I still have many things to say.

I decided to tell the truth even if it meant being pointed at.

Le daría el consejo que nos dábamos los jóvenes infrarrealistas en México. Cuando teníamos 20, 21 años, teníamos un grupo poético, y éramos jóvenes, mal educados y valientes. Nos decíamos: vivir mucho, leer mucho y follar mucho".

And I no longer ask for all the solitude in the world, but for time.

A person could be immensely happy reading only him or the writers he loved. But that would be too easy.

Only great challenges make it worthwhile to pack up and move all one's books.

Exile is courage. True exile is the true measure of each writer.

The demented strutting of a dumb bird in the moonlight.

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. (Significant, said the foreigner.) Odes to the human and the divine. Let my writing be like the verses of by Leopardi that Daniel Biga recited on a Nordic bridge to gird himself with courage.

Philip K. Dick died and now we only need what is strictly necessary.

One night I dreamed of an angel: I walked into a huge, empty bar and saw him sitting in a corner with his elbows on the table and a cup of milky coffee in front of him. She's the love of your life, he said, looking up at me, and the force of his gaze, the fire in his eyes, threw me right across the room. I started shouting, Waiter, waiter, then opened my eyes and escaped from that miserable dream. Other nights I didn't dream of anyone, but I woke up in tears.

La literatura se parece mucho a la pelea de los samuráis, pero un samurái no pelea contra otro samurái: pelea contra un monstruo. Generalmente sabe, además, que va a ser derrotado. Tener el valor, sabiendo previamente que vas a ser derrotado, y salir a pelear: eso es la literatura.