You let Jews into your home? The people who killed your brother!

He works in order to return.

The appeal of the Queer Issue is in seeing that great ambition writ small, in discovering the swarm of details and experience that cohere into the big picture of world writing.

An omnivorous poet, / I eat everything.

Being unaware of your wife's secrets is irritating, but not knowing your lover's secrets is ridiculous.

Translation is and should be a specialized occupation, but that doesn’t mean its natural audience should consist entirely of specialists.

The explosion had sent me flying through the air.

We are zigzagging on the road / like the plot unravels in Buñuel

“It’s the spirits, girl, it’s the spirits.”

It’s going to dawn over the prisons and tombs.

The murmuring on the far side of the barrio was neverending as the heavy machinery demolished homes.

I cross bridges just as I leave dreams in hotels.

The dog, as if she knew they were talking about her, opened her eyes and looked at her owner, who choked back a sob.

We could only / love dead women.

Only something that continues to hurt stays in the memory.

He stabbed him forty-eight times, all over his body, methodical, thorough, conscientious.

Everything went well until we got to Corfu.

“Now let’s get down to us,” she said, lowering her voice to a purr.

I don’t know where Mother would go off to. I’m not sure.

Aficionados of morbid details, you will be asking yourselves what method I used.

I was surprised when he was the first one who came and tried to blackmail me.

My wife and I were sitting on our porch when a man engulfed in flames entered our garden.

The majority of women can’t bear the idea of sleeping with someone they can’t see.

I was three and he was four.

With even more refined manners I propose she sticks a ballpoint up the cat’s rectum.

I put my cigarette out on a hand that held an empty briefcase of shiny leather.

There are no words to express it in the language of men who die only once. 

Maestro, I said, tell me, / reveal to me the secret of poetry.

Because we lived in brothels / and in dungeons

That night / Of Greek drunkenness/ In a Berlin tavern

Only time, the persistence of works in time, their readings after ten, fifty, or a thousand years will say if the edifice was constructed with strong, durable, or perishable materials.

Slow, the moon / returns month by month

I felt the arrogance with which one regards the dispossessed.

In order to walk lost in thought each could /become a talker.

The girl with a ponytail says: “Look at the sky,” and the other says, “The sky sucks.”

I would like to write as if I were in a passing car, with the radio on, which is one of the most delectable sensations I know.

And try to imagine what we will never know for sure: what old grudge (since it did not stem from us) and what precise urgency are at the root of everything that is going to happen today

Cutting through the inane shrubbery means, first off, not writing books that aren’t necessary.

As we were intending to cut him into small chunks, we thought it would be less stressful if he were bandaged.

On the sidewalks lie piles of uncollected garbage in enormous black bags, some of them split open.

Only someone who’s undressed a dead person can know how hard it is.

Husband and wife contemplate the silhouette of the tower. The woman feels particularly affectionate, and she hugs her husband.

It all started at the zoo: the smell of the zoo, the nervous excitability as we stepped off the minibus.

Mr. Beneset’s son arrives at the geriatric home and greets the girl at reception

The nurse walks into Room 93 pushing a cart carrying a tray with a glass of water, a jar of capsules, a thermometer, and a file folder rest.

Then with her hands / she’d crown her son’s head,

Observe yourself in the mirror, / unchanged yet strange,

The phone holds rumors of a sunken ship, / bubbles and silences.

The writer begins typing cautiously. He has to write a short story.

And then, while they’re still standing, taking off their jackets, one of the women accidentally knocks a fork—her own—with her sleeve, causing it to fall to the ground in silence

I wake up with an overwhelming urge to cry, but, since today’s going to be a busy day, I decide to cry later.

He was doing nothing, not a damn thing, simply drifting, spending hours sitting in the Sparschwein with his first glass of Sternburg at his side [ . . . ]

There are those who think that Mundaca is the most beautiful town on the Biscayan coast.

He was selected to be part of the Sonderkommando when he arrived at Treblinka.

The truth, however, is somewhat different. What follows is an account of how things really happened.

My friends were beginning to worry: Was I writing too many alphabets?

Bel doesn't answer. Spider appears to be listening to, even eavesdropping on our conversation, even my thoughts.

My cousin Irlanda was more beautiful than I remembered.

She stopped in front of a shop window full of umbrellas, and her friend, who was walking ahead of her, suddenly turned around: Carme, we'll get separated!