Last Evenings on Earth Quotes

“We never stop reading, although every book comes to an end, just as we never stop living, although death is certain”
― Roberto Bolaño, Last Evenings on Earth

“That's what art is, he said, the story of a life in all its particularity. It's the only thing that really is particular and personal. It's the expression and, at the same time, the fabric of the particular. And what do you mean by the fabric of the particular? I asked, supposing he would answer: Art. I was also thinking, indulgently, that we were pretty drunk already and that it was time to go home. But my friend said: What I mean is the secret story.... The secret story is the one we'll never know, although we're living it from day to day, thinking we're alive, thinking we've got it all under control and the stuff we overlook doesn't matter. But every damn thing matters! It's just that we don't realize. We tell ourselves that art runs on one track and life, our lives, on another, we don't even realize that's a lie.”
― Roberto Bolaño, Last Evenings on Earth

“I think of all those who believed in a Latin American paradise and died in a Latin American hell.”
― Roberto Bolaño, Last Evenings on Earth

“The girl replies that she was dreaming about her mother, who died not long ago. The dead are at peace, thinks B stretching out in the bed. As if she had read his mind, the girls says that no one who has passed through this world is at peace. Not anymore, not ever, she says with total conviction.”
― Roberto Bolaño, Last Evenings on Earth

“54. The children of the Spanish lion, said Ruben Dario, a born optimist. The children of Walt Whitman, Jose Marti, and Violeta Parra; torn apart, forgotten, in mass graves, at the bottom of the sea, the Trojan destiny of their mingled bones terrifying the survivors. ”
― Roberto Bolaño, Last Evenings on Earth

“This is where the story should end, but life is not as kind as literature.”
― Roberto Bolaño, Last Evenings on Earth

“Meanwhile I chain-smoked Bali cigarettes, looking at the window at the highway and thinking about the disaster that was my life.”
― Roberto Bolaño, Last Evenings on Earth

“Once again reality has proved that no particular group has a monopoly over demagogy, dogmatism, and ignorance.”
― Roberto Bolaño, Last Evenings on Earth

“I think of Beltrán Morales, I think of Rodrigo Lira, I think of Mario Santiago, I think of Reinaldo Arenas. I think of the poets who died under torture, who died of AIDS, or overdosed, all those who believed in a Latin American paradise and died in a Latin American hell.”
― Roberto Bolaño, Last Evenings on Earth

“We never stop reading, although every book comes to an end, just as we never stop living, although death is certain.”
― Roberto Bolaño, Last Evenings on Earth

“Enrique wanted to be a poet, and he threw himself into this endeavor with all his energy and willpower. He was tenacious in a blind, uncritical way, like the bad guys in westerns, falling like flies but persevering, determined to take the hero’s bullets, and in the end there was something likable about this tenacity; it gave him an aura, a kind of literary sanctity that only young poets and old whores can appreciate.”
― Roberto Bolaño, Last Evenings on Earth

“The dead are at peace, thinks B stretching out in the bed. As if she had read his mind, the girl says that no one who has passed through this world is at peace. Not anymore, not ever, she says with total conviction.”
― Roberto Bolaño, Last Evenings on Earth

“in a world where vast geographical spaces could suddenly shrink to the dimensions of a coffin,”
― Roberto Bolaño, Last Evenings on Earth