Quotes by Roberto Bolaño

Nothing is ever behind us.

Younger than Morini and Pelletier, Espinoza studied Spanish literature, not German literature, at least for the first two years of his university career, among other sad reasons because he dreamed of being a writer.

You can woo a girl with a poem, but you cant hold onto her with a poem. Not even with a poetry movement.

A person could be immensely happy reading only him or the writers he loved. But that would be too easy.

I didnt hit her, man, what happened was that Maria was obsessed with the Marquis de Sade and wanted to try the spanking thing, said Luscious Skin. Thats very Maria, said Pancho. She takes her reading seriously.

His words saddened them greatly, though they couldnt say why.

At the bar on the Favoritenstrasse, Julius the policeman talked to us about dignity, evolution, the great Darwin and the great Nietzsche. I translated so that my good friend Ulises could understand what he was saying, although I didn’t understand any of it. The prayer of the bones, said Julius. The yearning for health. The virtue of danger. The tenacity of the forgotten. Bravo, said my good friend Ulises. Bravo, said everyone else. The limits of memory. The wisdom of plants. The eye of parasites. The agility of the earth. The merit of the soldier. The cunning of the giant. The hole of the will. Magnificent, said my good friend Ulises in German. Extraordinary.

When you know something, you know it, and when you dont, youd better learn. And in the meantime, you should keep quiet, or at least speak only when what you say will advance the learning process.

Anyway, these ideas or feelings or ramblings had their satisfactions. They turned the pain of others into memories of one’s own. They turned pain, which is natural, enduring, and eternally triumphant, into personal memory, which is human, brief, and eternally elusive. They turned a brutal story of injustice and abuse, an incoherent howl with no beginning or end, into a neatly structured story in which suicide was always held out as a possibility. They turned flight into freedom, even if freedom meant no more than the perpetuation of flight. They turned chaos into order, even if it was at the cost of what is commonly known as sanity.

I dont know what Im doing in Santa Teresa, Amalfitano said to himself after hed been living in the city for a week.Dont you? Dont you really? he asked himself.Really I dont, he said to himself. And that was as eloquent as he could be.

Life is mysterious as well as vulgar.

All names disappear. Children should be taught that in elementary school. But were afraid to teach them.

If it was true that all effort led to a vast abyss, she had two recommendations to begin with, first, not to cheat people, and, second, to treat them properly. Beyond that, there was room for discussion.

Not only to myself or before the mirror or at the hour of my death, which I hope will be long in coming, but in the presence of my children and my wife and in the face of the peaceful life I’m building, I must acknowledge: (1) That under Stalin I wouldn’t have wasted my youth in the gulag or ended up with a bullet in the back of my head. (2) That in the McCarthy era I wouldn’t have lost my job or had to pump gas at a gas station. (3) That under Hitler, however, I would have been one of those who chose the path of exile, and that under Franco I wouldn’t have composed sonnets to the caudillo or the Holy Virgin like so many lifelong democrats. One thing is as true as the other. My bravery has its limits, certainly, but so does what I’m willing to swallow. Everything that begins as comedy ends as tragicomedy.

I decided to tell the truth even if it meant being pointed at.

Does this mean that in some places Im American and in some places Im African American and in other places, by logical extension, Im nobody?

Im American. Why didnt I say I was African American? Because Im in a foreign country? But can I really consider myself to be in a foreign country when I could go walking back to my own country right now if I wanted, and it wouldnt even take very long? Does this mean that in some places Im American and in some places Im African American and in other places, by logical extension, Im nobody?

[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.

So everything lets us down, including curiosity and honesty and what we love best. Yes, said the voice, but cheer up, its fun in the end.

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.