Biblioteka 404

“I walk the shelves, but no book makes me want to stop and pick it up. They're too new and alphabetically ordered and they smell too clean. I need a chaos of books. So I leave the shop, cross the river, and walk along the south keys. I turn onto Parliament Street and go into the second-hand charity bookshop. The books here are different shapes and sizes and feels. They smell of their previous owners in the same way dogs look like their owners or undertakers look like corpses. I buy a large hardback book with watercolor drawings of birds and a softback book about how to get things done. I would like to get things done and ticked off of lists. Some of my projects are endlessly roaming like lemmings without a leader.”
― Caitriona Lally, Eggshells

“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 beach.”
― Roberto Bolaño, 2666

“Without turning, the pharmacist answered that he liked books like The Metamorphosis, Bartleby, A Simple Heart, A Christmas Carol. And then he said that he was reading Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's. Leaving aside the fact that A Simple Heart and A Christmas Carol were stories, not books, there was something revelatory about the taste of this bookish young pharmacist, who ... clearly and inarguably preferred minor works to major ones. He chose The Metamorphosis over The Trial, he chose Bartleby over Moby Dick, he chose A Simple Heart over Bouvard and Pecouchet, and A Christmas Carol over A Tale of Two Cities or The Pickwick Papers. What a sad paradox, thought Amalfitano. Now even bookish pharmacists are afraid to take on the great, imperfect, torrential works, books that blaze a path into the unknown. They choose the perfect exercises of the great masters. Or what amounts to the same thing: they want to watch the great masters spar, but they have no interest in real combat, when the great masters struggle against that something, that something that terrifies us all, that something that cows us and spurs us on, amid blood and mortal wounds and stench.”
― Roberto Bolano, 2666

“So everything lets us down, including curiosity and honesty and what we love best. Yes, said the voice, but cheer up, it's fun in the end.”
― Roberto Bolaño, 2666