So Lorenzo grew up in Chile without arms, an unfortunate situation for any child, but he also grew up in Pinochet’s Chile, which turned unfortunate situations into desperate ones, on top of which he soon...

[A]nd the wizened youth trembles more and more violently, wrinkles his nose and then pounces on the story. But only I know the story, the real story. And it is simple and cruel and true...

I am dying now, but I still have many things to say.

That’s a pretty story,’ said Afanasievna as she let go of Ansky’s genitals. ‘A pity I’m too old and have seen to much to believe it.’It has nothing to do with belief,’ said Ansky, ‘it...

… the novel, arguably the author’s best, had a disquieting power, like a sleeping crocodile.

Of course, they were other things too. Sometimes they were even everything all together, but not fame, which was rooted in delusion and lies, if not ambition. Also, fame was reductive. Everything that ended in...

A person could be immensely happy reading only him or the writers he loved. But that would be too easy.

Uno no termina de leer, aunque los libros se acaben, de la misma manera que uno no termina de vivir, aunque la muerte sea un hecho cierto.

We’re artists too, but we do a good job hiding it, don’t we?

He had a little single-story house, three bedrooms, a full bathroom and a half bathroom, a combined kitchen-living room-dining room with windows that faced west, a small brick porch where there was a wooden bench...

While he was waiting, leaning on the counter at a coffee place, he remembered the dream he’d had the night before about Antonio Jones, who had been dead for several years now. As before, he...

While we are looking for the antidote or the medicine to cure us, that is, the ‘new’, which can only be found by plunging deep into the Unknown, we have to go on exploring sex,...

No one knew what she was doing in Colonia Hidalgo, although it was most likely, according to the police, that she’d been taking a walk and had come upon death purely by chance.

Younger than Morini and Pelletier, Espinoza studied Spanish literature, not German literature, at least for the first two years of his university career, among other sad reasons because he dreamed of being a writer.

His words saddened them greatly, though they couldn’t say why.

And finally the two of them plunged into the dark sea, a sea like a pack of wolves, and they dove around the boat trying to find young Reiter’s body, with no success, until they...

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 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.

El silencio de la muerte es el peor de los silencios, porque el silencio rulfiano es un silencio aceptado y el rimbaudiano es un silencio buscado, pero el silencio de la muerte es el que...

I didn’t hit her, man, what happened was that Maria was obsessed with the Marquis de Sade and wanted to try the spanking thing,” said Luscious Skin. “That’s very Maria,” said Pancho. “She takes her...

I went on writing reviews for the newspaper, and critical articles crying out for a different approach to culture, as even the most inattentive reader could hardly fail to notice if he scratched the surface...

There is a time for reciting poems and a time for fists.

For a while, Criticism travels side by side with the Work, then Criticism vanishes and it’s the Readers who keep pace. The journey may be long or short.

The sky, at sunset, looked like a carnivorous flower.

Reading is more important than writing.

Life is mysterious as well as vulgar.

Even on the poorest streets people could be heard laughing. Some of these streets were completely dark, like black holes, and the laughter that came from who knows where was the only sign, the only...

It was the tyrannical, slightly stupid thing you say after you’ve made love.

If you’re going to say what you want to say, you’re going to hear what you don’t want to hear.

Only poetry isn’t shit.

When you know something, you know it, and when you don’t, you’d better learn. And in the meantime, you should keep quiet, or at least speak only when what you say will advance the learning...

Metaphors are our way of losing ourselves in semblances or treading water in a sea of seeming.

[Los alumnos de Almafitano aprendieron…]Que la principal enseñanza de la literatura era la valentía, una valentía rara, como un pozo de piedra en medio de un paisaje lacustre, una valentía semejante a un torbellino y...

All names disappear. Children should be taught that in elementary school. But we’re afraid to teach them.

He chose The Metamorphosis over The Trial, he chose Bartleby over Moby-Dick, he chose A Simple Heart over Bouvard and Pecuchet, and A Christmas Carol over A Tale of Two Cities or The Pickwick Papers....

The pain, or the memory of pain, that here was literally sucked away by something nameless until only a void was left. The knowledge that this question was possible: pain that turns finally into emptiness....

I steal into their dreams,” he said. “I steal into their most shameful thoughts, I’m in every shiver, every spasm of their souls, I steal into their hearts, I scrutinize their most fundamental beliefs, I...

Sólo la fiebre y la poesía provocan visiones. / Sólo el amor y la memoria. / No estos caminos ni estas llanuras. / No estos laberintos.

Vzduch venku byl kapalného skupenství. Černá, antracitová voda, vybízející k tomu, aby jí člověk položil ruku na hřbet a pohladil ji.

The first conversation began awkwardly, although Espinoza had been expecting Pelletier’s call, as if both men found it difficult to say what sooner or later the would have to say. The first twenty minutes were...

For her, reading was directly linked to pleasure, not to knowledge or enigmas or constructions or verbal labyrinths…

Fizeram amor no quarto de Ansky e quem os houvesse visto teria dito que fodiam como se dali a umas horas fossem mmorrer. Na realidade, Nádia yurenieva fodia como fazia grande parte das moscovitas durante...

Ivanov’s fear was of a literary nature. That is, it was the fear that afflicts most citizens who, one fine (or dark) day, choose to make the practice of writing, and especially the practice of...

Toda vida, le dijo esa noche Epifanio a Lalo Cura, por más feliz que sea, acaba siempre en dolor y sufrimiento. Depende, dijo Lalo Cura. ,Depende de qué, buey? De muchas cosas, dijo Lalo Cura....

As far as Popescu was concerned, meanwhile, Dracula was simply a Romanian patriot who had resisted the Turks, a deed for which every European nation should to some degree be grateful. History is cruel, said...

I paid the taxi driver, got out with my suitcase, surveyed my surroundings, and just as I was turning to ask the driver something or get back into the taxi and return forthwith to Chillán...

The heart of the matter is whether knowing evil (or sin or crime or whatever you want to call it) is random or purposeful. If it’s purposeful, we can fight it, it’s hard to defeat,...

…I realized my happiness was artificial. I felt happy because I saw the others were happy and because I knew I should feel happy, but I wasn’t really happy.

I haven’t read much, but it still seems impossible to me that anyone, no matter how much he read, could’ve read every book in the world. There must be so many of them, and I...

I’m seventeen years old, my name is Juan García Madero, and I’m in my first semester of law school. I wanted to study literature, not law, but my uncle insisted, and in the end I...