Roberto Bolano Quotes

Every time I wake, I understand how easy it is to be nothing.

Things are only mannequins and even the great world-historical events are only costumes beneath which they exchange glances with nothingness.

One must either take an interest in the human situation or else parade before the void.

Nothing proves that we are more than nothing.

Regarding life, the wisest men of all ages have judged alike: it is worthless.

Life has become the ideology of its own absence.

Everything means nothing that is the only truth.

We do not pray for immortality, but only not to see our acts and all things stripped suddenly of all their meaning; for then it is the utter emptiness of everything reveals itself.

Some lived in it and never felt it but he knew it all was nada y pues nada y nada y pues nada.

Everything in the world is gloriously meaningless.

But whate'er I am, nor I nor any man that but man is, With nothing shall be pleased 'til he be eased With being nothing.

Whereas I think: I’m lying here in a haystack... The tiny space I occupy is so infinitesimal in comparison with the rest of space, which I don’t occupy and which has no relation to me. And the period of time in which I’m fated to live is so insignificant beside the eternity in which I haven’t existed and won’t exist... And yet in this atom, this mathematical point, blood is circulating, a brain is working, desiring something... What chaos! What a farce!

I think we are just insects, we live a bit and then die and that’s the lot. There’s no mercy in things. There’s not even a Great Beyond. There’s nothing.

We're all making castles in the sand, wonderful tapestries, an exquisite corpse. But is it meaningful? No. It's dogs barking. It doesn't mean anything beyond our yelping, at the pain of being alive.

Avoid the world, it's just a lot of dust and drag and means nothing in the end.

Since all life is futility, then the decision to exist must be the most irrational of all.

The thing about my music is, there really is no point.

In the nineteenth century the problem was that God is dead. In the twentieth century the problem is that man is dead.

For boredom speaks the language of time, and it is to teach you the most valuable lesson of your life - the lesson of your utter insignificance.

The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless.

You must realize that one day you will die. Until then you are worthless.

My search not only failed, but I convinced myself that all those who had searched like myself had failed also, and come like me to the despairing conviction that the only absolute knowledge man can possess is this—that life is without a meaning.

The meaningless absurdity of life is the only incontestable knowledge accessible to man.

I searched all areas of knowledge, and not only did I fail to find anything, but I was convinced that all those who had explored as I did had also come up with nothing. Not only had they found nothing, but they had clearly acknowledged the same thing that had brought me to despair: the only absolute knowledge attainable by man is that life is meaningless.

It is meaningless that we are born, it is meaningless that we die.