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 BOLANOThe 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.
More Roberto Bolano Quotes
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Nothing happened today. And if anything did, I’d rather not talk about it, because I didn’t understand it.
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Death, in the Eastern tradition, was only a passage. What wasn’t clear, was toward what place, what reality, that passage led.
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For her, reading was directly linked to pleasure, not to knowledge or enigmas or constructions or verbal labyrinths.
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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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we interpret life at moments of the deepest desperation.
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If you’re going to say what you want to say, you’re going to hear what you don’t want to hear.
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We’re artists too, but we do a good job hiding it, don’t we?
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The world is alive and no living thing has any remedy. That is our fortune.
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You run risks. That’s the plain truth. You run risks and, even in the most unlikely places, you are subject to destiny’s whims.
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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.
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I decided to tell the truth even if it meant being pointed at.
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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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Only in chaos are we conceivable.
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Metaphors are our way of losing ourselves in semblances or treading water in a sea of seeming.
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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