The Savage Detectives

by Roberto Bolaño

Then everything turned into a succession of concrete acts and proper nouns and verbs, or pages from an anatomy manual scattered like flower petals, chaotically linked.

Literature isn’t innocent. I’ve known that since I was fifteen. And I remember thinking that then, but I can’t remember whether I said it or not, and if I did, what the context was.

I saw our struggles and dreams all tangled up in the same failure, and that failure was called joy.

Those were days of deep soul-searching. And yet, at the same time, I have to admit, nothing mattered to me

Life left us all where we were meant to be or where it was convenient to leave us and then forgot us, which is as it should be.

Sometimes I feel so guilty, I thought, but the strangest thing is I don’t know why, I don’t know what I’ve done wrong to make me feel that way.