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Antwerp QUOTES

Antwerp QUOTES

1 " I wrote this book for the ghosts, who, because they're outside of time, are the only ones with time. After the last rereading (just now), I realize that time isn't the only thing that matters, time isn't the only source of terror. Pleasure can be terrifying too, and so can courage. "

― Roberto Bolaño , Antwerp

2 " And I no longer ask for all the solitude in the world, but for time. "

― Roberto Bolaño , Antwerp

3 " Of what is lost, irretrievably lost, all I wish to recover is the daily availability of my writing, lines capable of grasping me by the hair and lifting me up when I'm at the end of my strength. (Significant, said the foreigner.) Odes to the human and the divine. Let my writing be like the verses of by Leopardi that Daniel Biga recited on a Nordic bridge to gird himself with courage. "

― Roberto Bolaño , Antwerp

4 " It's absurd to see an enchanted princess in every girl who walks by. What do you think you are, a troubadour? "

― Roberto Bolaño , Antwerp

5 " Loneliness is an aspect of natural human egotism. "

― Roberto Bolaño , Antwerp

6 " There's a secret sickness called Lisa. Like all sicknesses, it's miserable and it comes on at night. "

― Roberto Bolaño , Antwerp

7 " I suppose all the movies I've seen will be worth nothing to me when I die. Wrong. They'll be worth something, believe me. Don't stop going to the movies. "

― Roberto Bolaño , Antwerp

8 " I no longer ask for all the loneliness of love or the tranquility of love or for the mirrors. "

― Roberto Bolaño , Antwerp

9 " Maybe "warehouses" equals "mothers", a wide margin of error is permissible when you're dealing with super-impositions. "

― Roberto Bolaño , Antwerp

10 " Silence glimmers in the empty hallways, on the radios no one listens to anymore. "

― Roberto Bolaño , Antwerp

11 " The brief sound is like a color swallowed by a crack. But what color? "

― Roberto Bolaño , Antwerp

12 " Who was the first human being to look out a window? "

― Roberto Bolaño , Antwerp

13 " Silence is love just as your raspy voice is a bird. "

― Roberto Bolaño , Antwerp

14 " One day I'll die of cancer. "

― Roberto Bolaño , Antwerp

15 " Gray mattresses with red and blue stripes in something that looks like a hallway or an overly long waiting room. In any case, his memory is frozen in immediate past like a faceless man in a dentist's chair. There are houses and streets that run down to the sea, dirty windows and shadows on staircase landings. We hear someone say "a long time ago it was noon," the light bounces off the center of immediate past, something that's neither a screen nor attempts to offer images. Memory slowly dictates soundless sentences. We imagine that all of this has been done to avoid confusion, a layer of white paint covers the film on the floor. Fleeing together long ago became living together and thus the integrity of the gesture was lost; the shine of immediate past. "

― Roberto Bolaño , Antwerp

16 " Nothing lasts, the purely loving gestures of
children tumble into the void. "

― Roberto Bolaño , Antwerp

17 " Sometimes I get the sense that it's all "internal"... Maybe that's why I lived alone and did nothing for three years ... (The man hardly ever washed, he didn't need a typewriter, all he had to do was sit in that shabby armchair for things to flee of their own accord) "

― Roberto Bolaño , Antwerp

18 " Above the street, like a hanged man, swings the spot-lit sign of the neighborhood's best restaurant, closed a long time ago. "

― Roberto Bolaño , Antwerp

19 " ... among them the nameless girl, with her guillotine mouth, strolling through the past and the future like a movie face. "

― Roberto Bolaño , Antwerp

20 " The sickness is to sit at the base of the lighthouse staring into nothing. The lighthouse is black, the sea is black, the writer's jacket is also black. "

― Roberto Bolaño , Antwerp