Quotes from book
Last Evenings on Earth

Name: Last Evenings on Earth
Author: Roberto Bolaño

Last Evenings on Earth is a collection of short stories by the Chilean author Roberto Bolaño, published in 1997 with a translation into English by Chris Andrews published in 2006. The stories in this volume were selected from two Spanish language collections, Llamadas Telefonicas , and Putas Asesinas . The remaining stories in these two collections were later gathered in The Return.

“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 single damn thing matters! Only we don't realize. We just tell ourselves that art runs on one track and life, our lives, on another, and we don't realize that's a lie.”

Roberto Bolaño book Last Evenings on Earth

Dentist
Last Evenings on Earth (2006)

“We never stop reading, although every book comes to an end, just as we never stop living, although death is certain.”

Roberto Bolaño book Last Evenings on Earth

Dentist
Source: Last Evenings on Earth (2006)

“I was imprisoned in Concepción for a few days and then realeased. They didn't torture me, as I had feared; they didn't even rob me. But they didn't give me anything to eat either, or any kind of covering for the night, so I had to rely on the goodwill of other prisoners, who shared their food with me. In the small hours I could hear them torturing others; I couldn't sleep and there was nothing to read except a magazine in English that someone had left behind. The only interesting article in it was about a house that had once belonged to Dylan Thomas. … I got out of that hole thanks to a pair of detectives who had been at high school with me in Los Ángeles…”

Roberto Bolaño book Last Evenings on Earth

His experience of being imprisoned during the regime of Augusto Pinochet, as depicted in "Dance Card", p. 215
Last Evenings on Earth (2006)

“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 those who were young no longer and those who died young, for those who fought for Salvador Allende and those who were too scared to fight.”

Roberto Bolaño book Last Evenings on Earth

Mauricio ('The Eye') Silva
Last Evenings on Earth (2006)

“It's strange how things happen, Mauricio Silva, known as the Eye, always tried to escape from violence even at the risk of being considered a coward, but the violence, the real violence, can't be escaped, at least not by us, born in Latin America in the 1950s, those of us who were around twenty years old when Salvador Allende died.”

Roberto Bolaño book Last Evenings on Earth

Mauricio ('The Eye') Silva
Last Evenings on Earth (2006)

“The Eye never said good-bye to anyone. I never said good-bye to anyone either.”

Roberto Bolaño book Last Evenings on Earth

Mauricio ('The Eye') Silva
Last Evenings on Earth (2006)
Context: 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 never said good-bye to anyone either.