They could read him, they could study him, they could pick him apart, but they couldn’t laugh or be sad with him.
ROBERTO BOLANOAs time goes by, as time goes by, the whip-crack of the years, the precipice of illusions, the ravine that swallows up all human endeavour except the struggle to survive.
More Roberto Bolano Quotes
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The sky, at sunset, looked like a carnivorous flower.
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Every book in the world is out there waiting to be read by me.
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You have to know how to look even if you don’t know what you’re looking for.
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For a moment the two of them looked at each other, wordless, as if they were asleep and their dreams had converged on common ground, a place where sound was alien.
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The secret story is the one we’ll never know, although we’re living it from day to day, thinking we’re alive, thinking we’ve got it all under control and the stuff we overlook doesn’t matter.
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We’re artists too, but we do a good job hiding it, don’t we?
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Jesus is the masterpiece. The thieves are minor works. Why are they there? Not to frame the crucifixion, as some innocent souls believe, but to hide it.
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So everything lets us down, including curiosity and honesty and what we love best. Yes, said the voice, but cheer up, it’s fun in the end.
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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.
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When I was done traveling, I returned convinced of one thing: we’re nothing.
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Poetry is the one thing that isn’t contaminated, the one thing that isn’t part of the game.
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One should read Borges more.
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In the current socio-political climate, he said to himself, committing suicide is absurd and redundant. Better to become an undercover poet.
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In some lost fold of the past, we wanted to be lions and we’re no more than castrated cats
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I realized my happiness was artificial. I felt happy because I saw the others were happy and because I knew I should feel happy, but I wasn’t really happy.
ROBERTO BOLANO