Posthumous: It sounds like the name of a Roman gladiator, an unconquered gladiator. At least that’s what poor Posthumous would like to believe. It gives him courage.

— Roberto Bolaño

Probably all of us, writers and readers alike, set out into exile, or at least into a certain kind of exile, when we leave childhood behind... The immigrant, the nomad, the traveler, the sleepwalker all exist, but not the exile, since every writer becomes an exile simply by venturing into literature, and every reader becomes an exile simply by opening a book.

— Roberto Bolaño

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 Bolaño

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 (oh yes), like looking at the view, like taking a walk on the beach.

— Roberto Bolaño

Reading is more important than writing.

— Roberto Bolaño

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

— Roberto Bolaño

Solo la figure y la poetic proposal visions. / Solo el armor y la memorial. / No Estes casinos NI Estes Laura. / No Estes labyrinths.

— Roberto Bolaño

That's a pretty story,' said Afanasievna as she let go of An sky's genitals. 'A pity I'm too old and have seen too much to believe it.' It has nothing to do with belief,' said An sky, 'it has to do with understanding, and then changing.

— Roberto Bolaño

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 Bolaño

The diseased, anyway, are more interesting than the healthy. The words of the diseased, even those who can manage only a murmur, carry more weight than those of the healthy. Then, too, all healthy people will know disease. That sense of time, ah, the diseased man’s sense of time, what treasure hidden in a desert cave. Then, to the diseased truly bite, whereas the healthy pretend to bite but really only snap at the air. Then, too, then, too, then, too.

— Roberto Bolaño