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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.

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
Going
Expectations
Hear

More quotes by Roberto Bolano

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You have to know how to look even if you don't know what you're looking for.
Roberto Bolano
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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 Bolano
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If I were to say what I really think I would be arrested or shut away in a lunatic asylum. Come on, I am sure that it would be the same for everyone.
Roberto Bolano
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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.
Roberto Bolano
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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.
Roberto Bolano
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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.
Roberto Bolano
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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.
Roberto Bolano
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We never stop reading, although every book comes to an end, just as we never stop living, although death is certain.
Roberto Bolano
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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.
Roberto Bolano
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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
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Reading is like thinking, like praying, like talking to a friend, like expressing your ideas, like listening to other people's ideas, like listening to music, like looking at the view, like taking a walk on the beach.
Roberto Bolano
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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.
Roberto Bolano
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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.
Roberto Bolano
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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.
Roberto Bolano
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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).
Roberto Bolano
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Bright colours in the west, giant butterflies dancing as night crept like a cripple toward the east.
Roberto Bolano
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There's no place on earth with more dumb girls per square foot than a college in California.
Roberto Bolano
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Reading is more important than writing.
Roberto Bolano
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Literature + Illness = Illness
Roberto Bolano
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Metaphors are our way of losing ourselves in semblances or treading water in a sea of seeming.
Roberto Bolano