2666: Reading is Believing

He was a professor at the medical school, and as a medical examiner he unfortunately never lacked for work, so he simply didn’t have time for other things, like business, for example. He was an atheist and it had been years since he’d read a book, despite the fact that he had amassed a more than decent library of works in his specialty, as well as volumes of philosophy and Mexican history and a novel or two. Sometimes he thought it was precisely because he was an atheist that he didn’t read any more. Not reading, it might be said, was the highest expression of atheism or at least of atheism as he conceived of it. If you don’t believe in God, how do you believe in a fucking book? he asked himself.

—Roberto Bolaño, 2666