Books are finite, sexual encounters are finite, but the desire to read and to fuck is infinite; it surpasses our own deaths, our fears, our hopes for peace.

— Roberto Bolaño

Bright colors in the west, giant butterflies dancing as night crept like a cripple toward the east.

— Roberto Bolaño

Did Jesus Christ, he asked, suspect that someday his church would spread to the farthest corners of Earth? Did Jesus Christ, he asked, ever have what we, today, call an idea of the world? Did Jesus Christ, who apparently knew everything, know that the world was round and to the east lived the Chinese (this sentence he spat out, as if it cost him great effort to utter it) and to the west the primitive peoples of America? And he answered himself, no, although of course in a way having an idea of the world is easy, everybody has one, generally an idea restricted to one's village, bound to the land, to the tangible and mediocre things before one's eyes, and this idea of the world, petty, limited, crusted with the grime of the familiar, tends to persist and acquire authority and eloquence with the passage of time.

— Roberto Bolaño

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

— Roberto Bolaño

Do you know what the worst thing about literature is? Said Don Pancreatic. I knew, but I pretended I didn't. What? I said. That you end up being friends with writers. And friendship, treasure though it may be, destroys your critical sense.

— Roberto Bolaño

El silence de la Puerto ES el poor de Los silencing, torque el silence ruffians ES un silence accepted y el rimbaudiano ES un silence Bushido, pro el silence de la Puerto ES el Que Costa de Tao lo Que judo SER y Ñuñoa MAS VA a power SER, lo Que no supremos James.

— Roberto Bolaño

Even on the poorest streets people could be heard laughing. Some of these streets were completely dark, like black holes, and the laughter that came from who knows where was the only sign, the only beacon that kept residents and strangers from getting lost.

— Roberto Bolaño

Every hundred feet the world changes

— Roberto Bolaño

For a while, Criticism travels side by side with the Work, then Criticism vanishes, and it's the Readers who keep pace. The journey may be long or short.

— Roberto Bolaño

For her, reading was directly linked to pleasure, not to knowledge or enigmas or constructions or verbal labyrinths…

— Roberto Bolaño