Quote

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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Roberto Bolano
Age: 50 †
Born: 1953
Born: April 28
Died: 2003
Died: July 16
Journalist
Literary Critic
Novelist
Poet
Writer
Santiago
Chile
Ay
Death
Place
Passage
Reality
Eastern
Passages
Tradition
Toward
Wasn
Clear

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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.
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Reading is more important than writing.
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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.
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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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There's no place on earth with more dumb girls per square foot than a college in California.
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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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Nothing happened today. And if anything did, I’d rather not talk about it, because I didn’t understand it.
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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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Poetry and prison have always been neighbors.
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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.
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The sky, at sunset, looked like a carnivorous flower.
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Literature is the product of a strange rain of blood, sweat, semen, and tears.
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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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Metaphors are our way of losing ourselves in semblances or treading water in a sea of seeming.
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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'm an educated man, the prisons I know are subtle ones.
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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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If you're going to say what you want to say, you're going to hear what you don't want to hear.
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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.
Roberto Bolano