213 Quotes by Roberto Bolano

[A]nd the wizened youth trembles more and more violently, wrinkles his nose and then pounces on the story. But only I know the story, the real story. And it is simple and cruel and true and it should make us laugh, it should make us die laughing. But we only know how to cry, the only thing we do wholeheartedly is cry.

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

When you know something, you know it, and when you don't, you'd better learn. And in the meantime, you should keep quiet, or at least speak only when what you say will advance the learning process.

Only fever and poetry provoke visions.Only love and memory.

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.

Allora gli dissi quello che aveva continuato a girarmi per la testa. Belano, gli dissi, il nocciolo della questione è sapere se il male (o il delitto o il crimine o come vuole chiamarlo) è casuale o causale. Se è causale possiamo lottare contro di lui, è difficile da sconfiggere ma c'è una possibilità, più o meno come fra due pugili dello stesso peso. Se è casuale, al contrario, siamo fregati. Che Dio, se esiste, abbia pietà di noi. È a questo che si riduce tutto.

. . . in other words near the settlement of El Obelisco, which was neither a village nor exactly a suburb of Santa Teresa, but a way station for the poorest of the poor who came each day from the south, people who slept there at night and even died in hovels that they didn't think of as homes but as one more stop along the road to something different or at least a place where they would be fed.

Lo vi haciendo planes, lo vi bebiendo apoyado en la ventana, lo vi recibiendo a Cesárea Tinajero que venía con una carta de recomendación de Manuel, lo vi leyendo un librito de Tablada, tal vez aquel en donde José Juan dice: "bajo el celeste pavor/ delira por la unica estrella/ el cántico del ruiseñor". Que es como decir, muchachos, les dije, que veía los esfuerzos y los sueños, todos confundidos en un mismo fracaso y ese fracaso se llamaba alegría. - R. Bolaño

Diarrhea is hardly ever a good thing, but going to the bathroom once or twice a day brings serenity and balance, a kind of inner peace. Not great inner peace, but a small and shining inner peace.