Quotes from Jorge Luís Borges

Night is pleasing to us because, like memory, it erases idle details. A New Refutation of Time

La ya avanzada edad me ha enseñado la resignación de ser Borges

Morir por un a religión es más simple que vivirla con plenitud.

The acts of madmen exceed the previsions of the sane.

And so, as I sleep, some dream beguiles me, and suddenly I know I dream. Then I think: this is a dream, a pure diversion of my will; now that I have unlimited power, I am going to create a tiger. Oh incompetence! Never do my dreams engender the wild beast I longed for. The tiger indeed appears, but stuffed or flimsy, or with impure variations of shape, or of an implausible size, or all too fleeting, or with a touch of the dog or bird.

Ajedrez misterioso la poesía, cuyo tablero y cuyas piezas cambian como en un sueño y sobre el cual me inclinaré después de haber muerto.

En mi época no había Best-Sellers y no podíamos prostituírnos. No había quien comprara nuestra prostitución.

A mí no me gusta que la gente me haga confidencias, porque mientras me dicen cosas importantísimas pienso en otra cosa y tengo miedo de que se den cuenta.

I always imagine them at nightfall, in the dusk of a slum or a vacant lot, in that long, quiet moment when things are gradually left alone, with their backs to the sunset, and when colors are like memories or premonitions of other colors. We must not be too prodigal with our angels; they are the last divinities we harbor, and they might fly away.

Mi memoria, señor, es como vaciadero de basuras.

Yo agonicé con él, yo morí con él, yo de algún modo me he perdido con él; por eso, fui implacable.

I'm alone and nobody is in the mirror

Si vous traduisez Shakespeare, il faut traduire aussi librement que Shakespeare écrivait.

Methodical writing distracts me from the present condition of men. But the certainty that everything has been already written nullifies or makes phantoms of us all.

Czym sÄ… w koÅ"cu sÅ'owa? SÅ'owa to symbole naszych wspólnych wspomnieÅ". Kiedy u?ywam danego sÅ'owa, spodziewam siÄ™, ?e czytelnicy posiadajÄ… pewne doÅ›wiadczenia, zwiÄ…zane z jego znaczeniem.

Je n'écris pas pour une petite élite dont je n'ai cure, ni pour cette entité platonique adulée qu'on surnomme la Masse. Je ne crois pas à ces deux abstractions, chères au démagogue. J'écris pour moi, pour mes amis et pour adoucir le cours du temps.

Now that I possess the secret, I could tell it in a hundred different and even contradictory ways. I don't know how to tell you this, but the secret is beautiful, and science, our science, seems mere frivolity to me now... And anyway, the secret is not as important as the paths that led me to it. Each person has to walk those paths himself.

Cada persona que pasa por nuestra vida es única. Siempre deja un poco de sí y se lleva un poco de nosotros. Habrá los que se llevarán mucho, pero no habrá de los que no nos dejarán nada. Esta es la prueba evidente de que dos almas no se encuentran por casualidad.

And I believe there was a rabbi who wrote that the Holy Scriptures were specifically destined, predestined, for each of its readers. That is, it has a different meaning if any of you read it or if I read it, or if it is read by men in the future or in the past.

I had always imagined Paradise as a kind of library. - Blindness

The word must have been in the beginning a magic symbol, which the usury of time wore out. The mission of the poet should be to restore to the word, at least in a partial way, its primitive and now secret force. All verse should have two obligations: to communicate a precise instance and to touch us physically, as the presence of the sea does.

A veces en las tardes una cara Nos mira desde el fondo de un espejo; El arte debe ser como ese espejo Que nos revela nuestra propia cara. (At times in the evenings a face Looks at us out of the depths of a mirror; Art should be like that mirror Which reveals to us our own face.)

There is no intellectual exercise that is not ultimately pointless. - Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote

In my own case, the process is more or less unvarying. I begin with the glimpse of a form, a kind of remote island, which will eventually be a story or a poem. I see the end and I see the beginning, but not what is in between. That is gradually revealed to me, when the stars or chance are propitious. More than once, I have had to retrace my steps by way of the shadows.