Metaphors are our way of losing ourselves in semblances or treading water in a sea of seeming. Roberto Bolano More Quotes by Roberto Bolano More Quotes From Roberto Bolano Drink up, boys, drink up and don’t worry, if we finish this bottle we’ll go down and buy another one. Of course, it won’t be the same as the one we’ve got now, but it’ll still be better than nothing. Ah, what a shame they don’t make Los Suicidas mezcal anymore, what a shame that time pases, don’t you think? what a shame that we die, and get old, and everything good goes galloping away from us. Roberto Bolano worryboysthinking I'm an educated man, the prisons I know are subtle ones. Roberto Bolano subtleprisonmen I’m seventeen years old, my name is Juan García Madero, and I’m in my first semester of law school. I wanted to study literature, not law, but my uncle insisted, and in the end I gave in. I’m an orphan, and someday I’ll be a lawyer. That’s what I told my aunt and uncle, and then I shut myself in my room and cried all night. Roberto Bolano auntunclesschool They could read him, they could study him, they could pick him apart, but they couldn't laugh or be sad with him. Roberto Bolano picksstudylaughing If life is misery, why do we endure it? Roberto Bolano enduremiserylife-is Every book in the world is out there waiting to be read by me. Roberto Bolano waitingbookworld I decided to tell the truth even if it meant being pointed at. Roberto Bolano decidedtelling-the-truthifs It's strange how things happen, Mauricio Silva, known as the Eye, always tried to escape from violence even at the risk of being considered a coward, but the violence, the real violence, can't be escaped, at least not by us, born in Latin America in the 1950s, those of us who were around twenty years old when Salvador Allende died. Roberto Bolano eyereallatin The pain, or the memory of pain, that here was literally sucked away by something nameless until only a void was left. The knowledge that this question was possible: pain that turns finally into emptiness. The knowledge that the same equation applied to everything, more or less. Roberto Bolano voidpainmemories 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 skullsgriefbroken Death, in the Eastern tradition, was only a passage. What wasn't clear ... was toward what place, what reality, that passage led. Roberto Bolano cleartraditionreality 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 ignorancewaitingbook Poetry and prison have always been neighbors. Roberto Bolano neighborprison …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 sawsshouldfeels In some lost fold of the past, we wanted to be lions and we're no more than castrated cats Roberto Bolano lionscatpast There is a time for reciting poems and a time for fists. Roberto Bolano recitingfistsstruggle Of what is lost, irretrievably lost, all I wish to recover is the daily availability of my writing, lines capable of grasping me by the hair and lifting me up when I'm at the end of my strength. (Significant, said the foreigner.) Odes to the human and the divine. Let my writing be like the verses of by Leopardi that Daniel Biga recited on a Nordic bridge to gird himself with courage. Roberto Bolano bridgeshairwriting That's a pretty story,' said Afanasievna as she let go of Ansky's genitals. 'A pity I'm too old and have seen to much to believe it.' It has nothing to do with belief,' said Ansky, 'it has to do with understanding, and then changing. Roberto Bolano understandingletting-gobelieve Only in chaos are we conceivable. Roberto Bolano chaos The diseased, anyway, are more interesting than the healthy. The words of the diseased, even those who can manage only a murmur, carry more weight than those of the healthy. Then, too, all healthy people will in the future know disease. That sense of time, ah, the diseased man’s sense of time, what treasure hidden in a desert cave. Then, too the diseased truly bite, whereas the healthy pretend to bite but really only snap at the air. Then, too, then, too, then, too. Roberto Bolano airmenpeople
