In the current socio-political climate, he said to himself, committing suicide is absurd and redundant. Better to become an undercover poet.
ROBERTO BOLANOIf 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.
More Roberto Bolano Quotes
-
-
Reading is pleasure and happiness to be alive or sadness to be alive and above all it’s knowledge and questions.
ROBERTO BOLANO -
If life is misery, why do we endure it?
ROBERTO BOLANO -
The sky, at sunset, looked like a carnivorous flower.
ROBERTO BOLANO -
No one pays attention to these killings, but the secret of the world is hidden in them.
ROBERTO BOLANO -
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 -
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 -
Only in chaos are we conceivable.
ROBERTO BOLANO -
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.
ROBERTO BOLANO -
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.
ROBERTO BOLANO -
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.
ROBERTO BOLANO -
Nothing good ever comes of love. What comes of love is always something better.
ROBERTO BOLANO -
Literature is the product of a strange rain of blood, sweat, semen, and tears.
ROBERTO BOLANO -
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 -
For her, reading was directly linked to pleasure, not to knowledge or enigmas or constructions or verbal labyrinths.
ROBERTO BOLANO -
Every book in the world is out there waiting to be read by me.
ROBERTO BOLANO -
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 -
If you’re going to say what you want to say, you’re going to hear what you don’t want to hear.
ROBERTO BOLANO -
Bright colours in the west, giant butterflies dancing as night crept like a cripple toward the east.
ROBERTO BOLANO -
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.
ROBERTO BOLANO -
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 -
Poetry and prison have always been neighbors.
ROBERTO BOLANO -
I decided to tell the truth even if it meant being pointed at.
ROBERTO BOLANO -
Poetry is the one thing that isn’t contaminated, the one thing that isn’t part of the game.
ROBERTO BOLANO -
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 -
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 -
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