“People often believed they were safer in the light, thinking monsters only came out at night. But safety – like light – is a façade.”

“He was the monster that no one thought to look for in the light of day. It was a common mistake. People often believed they were safer in the light, thinking monsters only came out at night. But safety - like light - is a facade. Underneath, the whole world is drenched in darkness.”

“Safety - like light - is a façade. Underneath, the whole world is drenched in darkness.”

“He told me about his monster. His sounded just like mine without quite so much mascara. When people shine a little light on their monster, we find out how similar most of our monsters are.”

“And then Lihn got out of the swimming pool and we went down to the ground floor, and we made our way through the crowded bar, and Lihn said, The tigers are finished, and, It was sweet while it lasted, and, You’re not going to believe this, Bolaño, but in this neighborhood only the dead go out for a walk. And by then we had reached the front of the bar and were standing at a window, looking out at the streets and the façades of the buildings in that peculiar neighborhood where the only people walking around were dead. And we looked and looked, and the façades were clearly the façades of another time, like the sidewalks covered with parked cars that also belonged to another time, a time that was silent yet mobile (Lihn was watching it move), a terrible time that endured for no reason other than sheer inertia.”

“We walked back the way we came, and even though it was dark there were no lights burning inside the houses. They were like people without hearts; raspberry tarts without the jam.”