In that room I met practically the entire fauna of the epoch.

I feel the promises impressed by your lips.I repeat the ringing syllables of your name

I want to know where you got this filth.

The newspapers report daily on collective graves, on bullets raining down in bars, drug rehab centers, city streets, at school gates, and in churches.

In Mexico, people will pay up to $70,000 dollars for a license to hunt and kill a bighorn sheep. Killing a man is much cheaper.

Every street corner in Juarez harbors the story of a murder

The parakeet is cocaine, the rooster is the marijuana and the nanny goat is an AK-47 assault rifle.

This is the shield we use to protect ourselves: with so many people involved, I’m not going to be the first to act.

The authorities insist they are taking / appropriate steps / to control the plague of zombies

He was like a butcher who says, I don’t kill the cattle, I simply cut them up.

The Mexican literary world is in crisis as it tries to face the history of the present.

That was when Pedro went in, clamped his hand over the cop’s mouth, and got him in a neck lock.

Here, the killers protect us: they’re good people, they’re my friends.

This is the image that for some time has been occupying and saturating public debate in Mexico: an undefined, unspeakable heap of corpses.

In which junkie’s syringe did you become trapped, my Homeland?

“Villoro always cuts through genres with the precision of a scalpel.”—Javier Marías

If I was a cactus, what kind of plant was Midori?

“Come now, Hemingway,” she teased, “you really don’t know this gentleman’s stories?”

Before Vanessa, I had other girlfriends, but none of them was memorable or worthy of appearing in my scrapbook.

A woman—I should say a stranger—who caresses you, jokes with you

They say that according to the calculations of the most ancient African astronomers, the sun slows down when it passes over Mogador, lingering there more than any other place on the planet.

we're in an epidemic: / we're creatures of swine flu la influenza porcina:

69752. That it was his phone number. That it was tattooed there, on his left forearm, so he wouldn't forget it.

he doesn't sing, he doesn't fly, he has no wings.

gush of penumbra / anchored in the calm

Moira and I wait for Stalin's wife in a downtown café.

We all waited anxiously for your answer, your reaction.

The rooms aren't what they appear to be

This hotel is an old school, / you can feel it despite the time.

I went to look for Martín even though he didn't like for me to go all the way to the riverbank.

They began to call you, the rocks, breathing,

Don't tell me you want to return to those days without democracy, the PRI's?

Twelve knots are losing patience around the eyebrows / of the year to come.

His real name was probably Max Mirebalais, although we will never know for sure.

“Ambar Past’s poetry is born out of the beauty of Chiapas.” —Elena Poniatowska

He hugged me, baptizing me with his sweat.

According to legend, those strange rocks had been brought by sea from distant countries where silk was sold.

Radio held up his three losing cards. There was no need to show the other two as well.

During their lifetimes, Jorge Luis Borges and Roberto Bolaño struggled against vanity and all things pretentious, aspirational, ordinary, and obliging.

He was apt to score unbelievable goals whenever he could keep his balance on the field, something that didn't always happen: occasionally he fell over while fighting for the ball and couldn't get back up again because he was too drunk.

But his canvases were irresistible, hypnotic, and no sooner did his greatest critics lay eyes on them than they rushed to have their own portraits executed by that magical hand.

I don't want to go for nothing. Have they really given up all hope for her? I ask with my eyes fixed on the desk, forcing myself not to stutter, not to rush.

Is this some sort of joke? Just because my name sounds Spanish doesn't mean that I am from Argentina.

Here, in this hotel room with yellowish, scratched walls, Clara found an incomplete solitude.

A deafening noise erupts at the metal detector.

Vicente Rangel González pulled out the twenty-two-caliber pistol he'd paid for in ten installments, undid his belt and put on the holster.

There are stories that seem impossible to tell.

They promised to purge the media during their campaign. And they're going to start with us, he chewed on his cigarette in despair.

I believe in God, but I would never kill in his name, said Argudíin, ignoring Vladimiro's provocation.

To turn the stone over in the palm of my hand, scrutinize it more closely, a real stone, a diamond in the rough?

What fate does the future hold for me? Jason asked, intrigued.

They warned her that one more offense against good behavior and the promised trip to the promised land (the United States) would be cancelled . . .

Chapter FiveWe were working on “recording” the following scenes from my novel: the Sunday lunch in the garden at Manuel’s house, where the two families part amicably, mothers and aunts…

The following afternoon, I assist in the nerve-wracking removal of the bandages.

Where do you go, Marías, where do you go?

There is a place in the Universe / where the memory of time / is recorded.

This poem from an indigenous Purépecha author celebrates the heroism of a seemingly ordinary woman.

They squeezed us and they piled us up to fill up the city, to live like ants, like crazed lizards in the middle of trash.

Perhaps this is the best moment to dispel any doubts the reader may have with regard to my intellectual seriousness and capacity (I doubt the list of authors included above had much effect).

Germinating on her skin was the feeling she was not understood.