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The 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.

Roberto Bolano

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Roberto Bolano
Age: 50 †
Born: 1953
Born: April 28
Died: 2003
Died: July 16
Journalist
Literary Critic
Novelist
Poet
Writer
Santiago
Chile
Ay
Thinking
Secret
Story
Living
Stuff
Doesn
Overlook
Stories
Although
Matter
Control
Never
Alive

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As time goes by, as time goes by, the whip-crack of the years, the precipice of illusions, the ravine that swallows up all human endeavour except the struggle to survive.
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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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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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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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I'm an educated man, the prisons I know are subtle ones.
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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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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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They could read him, they could study him, they could pick him apart, but they couldn't laugh or be sad with him.
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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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Bright colours in the west, giant butterflies dancing as night crept like a cripple toward the east.
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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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In some lost fold of the past, we wanted to be lions and we're no more than castrated cats
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Literature is a vast forest and the masterpieces are the lakes, the towering trees or strange trees, the lovely, eloquent flowers, the hidden caves, but a forest is also made up of ordinary trees, patches of grass, puddles, clinging vines, mushrooms, and little wildflowers.
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You have to know how to look even if you don't know what you're looking for.
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No one pays attention to these killings, but the secret of the world is hidden in them.
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There's no place on earth with more dumb girls per square foot than a college in California.
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Coincidence obeys no laws and if it does we don't know what they are. Coincidence, if you'll permit me the simile, is like the manifestation of God at every moment on our planet. A senseless God making senseless gestures at his senseless creatures. In that hurricane, in that osseous implosion, we find communion.
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Reading is more important than writing.
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The sky, at sunset, looked like a carnivorous flower.
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