When people read his books they have an uncontrollable desire to hang the author in the town square. I can’t think of a higher honor for a writer.
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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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.
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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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When I was done traveling, I returned convinced of one thing: we’re nothing.
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Reading is more important than writing.
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Only in chaos are we conceivable.
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I’m an educated man, the prisons I know are subtle ones.
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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.
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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.
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Literature is the product of a strange rain of blood, sweat, semen, and tears.
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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.
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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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we interpret life at moments of the deepest desperation.
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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.
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I decided to tell the truth even if it meant being pointed at.
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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.
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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.
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If life is misery, why do we endure it?
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The world is alive and no living thing has any remedy. That is our fortune.
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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.
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Every book in the world is out there waiting to be read by me.
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Reading is pleasure and happiness to be alive or sadness to be alive and above all it’s knowledge and questions.
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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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The moon is fat and the night air is so pure it seems edible.
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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).
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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.
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Every hundred feet the world changes.
ROBERTO BOLANO