“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.”

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.

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.

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

Every book in the world is out there waiting to be read by me.

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

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.

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.

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

Literature + Illness = Illness.

The sky, at sunset, looked like a carnivorous flower.

I’ll tell you, my friends: it’s all in the nerves. The nerves that tense and relax as you approach the edges of companionship and love. The razor-sharp edges of companionship and love.

One should read Borges more.

If I were to say what I really think I would be arrested or shut away in a lunatic asylum. Come on, I am sure that it would be the same for everyone.

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.

Literature is the product of a strange rain of blood, sweat, semen, and tears.

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

Don’t waste your youth growing up.

Growing up is scary because it happens without you knowing it.

Grown ups are complicated creatures, full of quirks and secrets.

I attempt to be who I am and it’s fun. At the same time, growing up doing what I’m doing can be a little crazy.

The child needs a helping hand or he’ll grow up to be an angry young man some day.

When you’re old enough to write a book for children, by then you’ll have become a grown up and have lost all your jokeyness. Unless you’re an undeveloped adult and still have an enormous amount of childishness in you.

I don’t have any extraordinary gifts. I’m just an average Joe who grew up very poor in rural Alabama.

When I was growing up they used to say, “Robin, drugs can kill you.” Now that I’m 58 my doctor’s telling me, “Robin, you need drugs to live.” I realize now that my doctor is also my dealer.