Quote #8

The moment we 'discover' a favorite writer is like our experience of a cataclysmic event - we can remember precisely where we were and what we were doing when it occurred.... So I assume I'll always recall the doctor's waiting room where I opened a dimpled, out-of-date issue of The New Yorker and found Roberto Bolano's story 'Gomez Palacio.' For the first time, I was glad the doctor was running late, so I could read the story twice, and still have a few minutes left over to consider the fact that I had just encountered something extraordinarily beautiful and (at least to me) entirely new.

More from Roberto Bolano

  1. Reading Roberto Bolano is like hearing the secret story, being shown the fabric of the particular, watching the tracks of art and life merg…
  2. If I were to say what I really think I would be arrested or shut away in a lunatic asylum. Come on, I am sure that it would be the same for…
  3. Bolano's narrative style is fragmented and loaded. It is also full of a strange kind of gallows humour, as we are swept along by stories th…
  4. ?Como reconocer una obra de arte? ?Como separarla, aunque solo sea un momento, de su aparato critico, de sus exegetas, de sus incansables p…
  5. Bolano has a laser eye and a frank, confessional first-person voice as relentless as it is irresistible. His 'infra-realism' sears through …
  6. That night when he went back to his hotel, he wept for his dead children and all the other castrated boys, for his own lost youth, for thos…
  7. By far the most inspiring talent from south of the border since the '70s. A Chilean who lived for years in Mexico and ultimately settled ne…
  8. One day I heard that The Eye had left Mexico. I wasn't surprised that he hadn't said good-bye. The Eye never said good-bye to anyone. I nev…

All Roberto Bolano quotes