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They could read him, they could study him, they could pick him apart, but they couldn’t laugh or be sad with him.

Roberto Bolano

Death, in the Eastern tradition, was only a passage. What wasn’t clear, was toward what place, what reality, that passage led.
ROBERTO BOLANO

Death Passage Reality Tradition
They could read him, they could study him, they could pick him apart, but they couldn’t laugh or be sad with him.
ROBERTO BOLANO

Himself Laughter Reading Sadness Study
The truth is we never stop being children, terrible children covered in sores and knotty veins and tumors and age spots, but ultimately children, in other words we never stop clinging to life because we are life.
ROBERTO BOLANO

Children Grow Up Life Philosophy Stop Truth
Nothing happened today. And if anything did, I’d rather not talk about it, because I didn’t understand it.
ROBERTO BOLANO

Myself Talk Understand
Being alone makes us stronger. That’s the honest truth. But it’s cold comfort, since even if I wanted company no one will come near me anymore.
ROBERTO BOLANO

Alone Company Honesty Myself Strong Truth
Reading is pleasure and happiness to be alive or sadness to be alive and above all it’s knowledge and questions.
ROBERTO BOLANO

Happiness Knowledge Pleasure Question Reading
I kept having dreams all night. I thought they were touching me with their fingers. But dreams don’t have fingers, they have fists, so it must have been scorpions.
ROBERTO BOLANO

Dreams Fingers Thinking Touching
Then he went out without touching anything and put his arm around Ingeborg, and like that, with their arms around each other, they returned to the village while the whole past of the universe fell on their heads.
ROBERTO BOLANO

Each Other Head Past Touch Universe
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

Feeling Happiness Myself Realize
The moon is fat and the night air is so pure it seems edible.
ROBERTO BOLANO

Edible Fat Moon Night Purity
You have to know how to look even if you don’t know what you’re looking for.
ROBERTO BOLANO

Known Yourself
When I was done traveling, I returned convinced of one thing: we’re nothing.
ROBERTO BOLANO

Myself Return Traveling
We never stop reading, although every book comes to an end, just as we never stop living, although death is certain.
ROBERTO BOLANO

Book Death Philosophy Reading Stop
Nothing is ever behind us.
ROBERTO BOLANO

Pace Right Time
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.
ROBERTO BOLANO

Curiosity End Fun Honesty Voice
Reading is more important than writing.
ROBERTO BOLANO

Important Reading Writing
One should read Borges more.
ROBERTO BOLANO

Book Oneself Reading
No one pays attention to these killings, but the secret of the world is hidden in them.
ROBERTO BOLANO

Attention Hide Kill Oneself Pay Secret
I’d obviously never heard of the group, but my ignorance in literary matters is to blame for that (every book in the world is out there waiting to be read by me).
ROBERTO BOLANO

Group Ignorance Myself Reading World
As 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.
ROBERTO BOLANO

Human Illusion Struggle Survive Swallow Time
For her, reading was directly linked to pleasure, not to knowledge or enigmas or constructions or verbal labyrinths.
ROBERTO BOLANO

Construction Knowledge Pleasure Reading Verbal
We all have to die a bit every now and then and usually it’s so gradual that we end up more alive than ever. Infinitely old and infinitely alive.
ROBERTO BOLANO

Alive Death End Gradual Infinite
Nothing good ever comes of love. What comes of love is always something better.
ROBERTO BOLANO

Better Goodness Love Philosophy
Literature + Illness = Illness.
ROBERTO BOLANO

Illness Literature
There is a time for reciting poems and a time for fists.
ROBERTO BOLANO

Fist Poem Recite Time
When you die of sorrow it’s as if you’ve broken all the bones in your body, bruised yourself all over, cracked your skull. That’s sorrow.
ROBERTO BOLANO

Body Bone Death Sorrow Yourself
But every single damn thing matters! Only we don’t realize. We just tell ourselves that art runs on one track and life, our lives, on another, and we don’t realize that’s a lie.
ROBERTO BOLANO

Art Lying Ourselves Realize

They could read him, they could study him, they could pick him apart, but they couldn’t laugh or be sad with him.

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They could read him, they could study him, they could pick him apart, but they couldn’t laugh or be sad with him.

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