Quotes from Jorge Luís Borges

My name is someone & anyone. I walk slowly, like one who comes from so far away he doesn't expect to arrive.

Cervantes' text and Menard's are verbally identical; but the second is almost infinitely richer.

I think the first reading of a poem is a true one, and after that we delude ourselves into the belief that the sensation the impression, is repeated. But, as I say, it may be mere loyalty,a mere trick of memory a mere confusion we once felt,thus it may be said that poetry is a new experience every time,every time I read a poem the experience happns to occur and that is poetry

There is no intellectual exercise which is not ultimately useless.

Taught by centuries of living, the republic of immortal men had achieved a perfection of tolerance, almost of disdain. They knew that over an infinitely long span of time, all things happen to all men. As reward for his past and future virtues, every man merited every kindness—yet also every betrayal, as reward for his past and future iniquities.

Such a pity that he [GK Chesterton] became a Catholic.

In death we shall rediscover all the instants of our life and we shall freely combine them as in dreams.

Why a should a dream be any less real than this table. Or Macbeth be less real than today's newspaper.

Perhaps a feature of the crucified face lurks in every mirror; perhaps the face died, was erased, so that God may be all of us. Who knows but that tonight we may see it in the labyrinth of dreams, and tomorrow not know we saw it.

Si un libro les aburre, déjenlo. No lo lean porque es famoso o porque es moderno o porque es antiguo. Si un libro es tedioso para ustedes, déjenlo, aunque ese libro sea el Quijote. Ese libro no ha sido escrito para ustedes. La lectura debe ser una de las formas de la felicidad y no se puede obligar a nadie a ser feliz.

La ceguera gradual no es cosa trágica. Es como un lento atardecer de verano.

Publicamos para não passar a vida a corrigir rascunhos. Quer dizer, a gente publica um livro para livrar-se dele

I offer you explanations of yourself, theories about yourself, authentic and surprising news of yourself. I can give you my loneliness, my darkness, the hunger of my heart; I am trying to bribe you with uncertainty, with danger, with defeat.

Others died, but it happened in the past, The season (as all men know) most favorable for death. Is it possible that I, subject of Yaqub Almansur, Must die as roses had to die and Aristotle?

Quando um indivíduo cria algo, digamos, uma composição musical, um romance, uma pintura, um filme, um vídeo, esse indivíduo se torna um autor, quer dizer, alguém que é capaz de deixar marcas, traços de seu modo próprio de criar mensagens em um processo de signos com o qual lida. O autor é aquele que interfere de modo particular e pessoal em um processo de signos.

In literary practices the idea of a single subject is also all-powerful. It is uncommon for books to be signed. The concept of plagiarism does not exist: it has been established that all works are the creation of one author, who is atemporal and anonymous. The critics often invent authors: they select two dissimilar works - the Tao Te Ching and the 1001 Nights, say - attribute them to the same writer and then determine most scrupulously the psychology of this interesting homme de lettres...

Literature is not exhaustible, for the sufficient and simple reason that a single book is not. A book is not an isolated entity: it is a narration, an axis of innumerable narrations. One literature differs from another, either before or after it, not so much because of the text as for the manner in which it is read.

Little did they suspect that the years would end by wearing away the disharmony. Little did they suspect that La Mancha and Montiel and the knight's frail figure would be, for the future, no less poetic than Sinbad's haunts or Ariosto's vast geographies. For myth is at the beginning of literature, and also at its end.

I do not know which of us has written this page.

The central fact of my life has been the existence of words and the possibility of weaving those words into poetry.

I thought of a labyrinth of labyrinths, of one sinuous spreading labyrinth that would encompass the past and the future and in some way involve the stars.

El pasado es la sustancia de que el tiempo está hecho; por ello es que éste se vuelve pasado en seguida.

Uno está enamorado cuando se da cuenta de que otra persona es única.

Tearing money is an impiety, like throwing away bread.