black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

Poetry is the one thing that isn’t contaminated, the one thing that isn’t part of the game.

Roberto Bolano

we interpret life at moments of the deepest desperation.
ROBERTO BOLANO

Desperation Life Moments
Reading is like thinking, like praying, like talking to a friend, like expressing your ideas, like listening to other people’s ideas, like listening to music, like looking at the view, like taking a walk on the beach.
ROBERTO BOLANO

Friendship People Prayer Reading Thinking View Walk
Bright colours in the west, giant butterflies dancing as night crept like a cripple toward the east.
ROBERTO BOLANO

Color Dance Night
Only in chaos are we conceivable.
ROBERTO BOLANO

Chaos Conceive
In the current socio-political climate, he said to himself, committing suicide is absurd and redundant. Better to become an undercover poet.
ROBERTO BOLANO

Climate Commitment Himself Poet Suicide
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
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

Constant Mirror Pain Poverty Voice Wealth
You have to know how to look even if you don’t know what you’re looking for.
ROBERTO BOLANO

Known Yourself
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
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.
ROBERTO BOLANO

Arrest Myself Retard Thinking
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
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
One should read Borges more.
ROBERTO BOLANO

Book Oneself Reading
If life is misery, why do we endure it?
ROBERTO BOLANO

Endurance Life Misery
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
Reading is more important than writing.
ROBERTO BOLANO

Important Reading Writing
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
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
Dreams fade with morning light, Never a morn for thee, Dreamer of dreams, goodnight.
ROBERTO BOLANO

Dreams Fade Goodness Light Morning
I’m an educated man, the prisons I know are subtle ones.
ROBERTO BOLANO

Education Man Oneself Prison Subtle
Literature + Illness = Illness.
ROBERTO BOLANO

Illness Literature
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
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
Metaphors are our way of losing ourselves in semblances or treading water in a sea of seeming.
ROBERTO BOLANO

Assume Lose Sea Water
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
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
I decided to tell the truth even if it meant being pointed at.
ROBERTO BOLANO

Art Decision Point Truth

Poetry is the one thing that isn’t contaminated, the one thing that isn’t part of the game.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

Poetry is the one thing that isn’t contaminated, the one thing that isn’t part of the game.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Roberto Bolano Quotes