“‘Good-bye,’ said the fox. ‘Here is my secret. It’s quite simple: One sees clearly only with the heart. Anything essential is invisible to the eyes.’”

“So he spoke, and Kalypso, shining among divinities, smiled and stroked him with her hand and spoke to him and named him: ‘You are so naughty . . . ’”

“At Fourth and Elm, cars turn left for the supermarket. A policewoman crouched inside a boxlike vehicle patrols the area looking for cars parked illegally . . .”

“His side, her side.”

“Whenever we make that drive, I always take Massachusetts Avenue, in spite of the traffic. I barely recognize the buildings now, but each time I am there I return instantly to those six weeks as if they were only the other day . . .”

“‘Come here,’ the head says to me, and I squat down. ‘That’s it for me. I’m fucked. As per usual. Always the bridesmaid, never the bride. Although come to think of it I was never even the freaking bridesmaid.”

“And, after boasting this way of my tolerance, I come to the admission that it has a limit.”

“Only I wasn't steering anything, not even myself. I just bumped from my hotel to work and to parties and from parties to my hotel and back to work like a numb trolleybus.”

“In the central portion of the great North American Continent there lies an arid and repulsive desert, which for many a long year served as a barrier against the advance of civilization.”

“‘Well, that's a shame,’ said Bolaño, ‘a man of action is a frustrated writer. If Don Quixote had written one single book of chivalry he never would have been Don Quixote . . .”

“‘Jacob have I loved . . .’ Suddenly my stomach flipped. Who was speaking? I couldn’t remember the passage. Was it Isaac, the gather of the twins?”

“‘What about it?’” I asked—for I never hesitated to speak freely in front of the Cardinal. ‘This method of dealing with thieves is both unjust and socially undesirable.’”

“The stars twinkle out of a clear black sky. Through the bars of the yard gate comes the gleam of a fire on the square beyond."

“Three phones rang. A duplicate wrist radio in his desk drawer buzzed like a wounded grasshopper. The intercom flashed a pink light and click-clicked. Three phones rang.”

“Meilan studied the old man shrinking into the depth of the armchair, his eyes looking past her and dwelling on some distant past she had no place in. How many times in his life had he let himself truly see her?”

“Several years ago, walking east on Fifty-seventh Street between Sixth and Fifth Avenues on a bright fall day, I had what I believed at the time to be an apprehension of death.”

“For a long time I used to go to bed early. Sometimes, when I had put out my candle, my eyes would close so quickly that I had not even time to say ‘I’m going to sleep.’”

“From the jungles of his dreaming he recognized why the Japanese voices had merged with Laguna voices, with Josiah’s and Rocky’s voice . . .”

“Edgar tried to think of a way to badmouth this immense son leaning over him like a large blaring building. But he couldn't think of anything. Thinking of anything was beyond him.”

“‘You made me confess the fears that I have. But I will tell you also what I do not fear. I do not fear to be alone or to be spurned for another or to leave wherever I have to leave.’”