Quotes from Jorge Luís Borges

Being with you or without you is how I measure my time.

Each writer creates his precursors. His work modifies our conception of the past, as it will modify the future.

Sleepless, obsessed, almost joyful, I reflected on how nothing is less material than money, insamuch as any coin whatsoever (a twenty-centavo piece, let us say) is, strictly speaking, a repertory of possible futures. Money is abstract, I repeated, money is future time. It can be an evening in the suburbs, it can be the music of Brahms, it can be chess, it can be coffee, it can be the words of Epictetus teaching us to despise gold.

The notion of art as a compromise is a simplification, for no one knows entirely what he is doing. A writer can conceive a fable, Kipling acknowledged, without grasping its moral. He must be true to his imagination, and not to the mere ephemeral circumstances of a supposed 'reality'.

kitapl?k sahibi tüm insanlar gibi aurelianus da sahip olduÄŸu bütün kitaplar? hakk?n? vererek okumam?? olmakla suçlard? kendini.bu tart??ma ona kitapl???n?n raflar?nda ihmal edildikleri için ay?plar gibi duran birçok kitab? gözden geçirme f?rsat? verdi.(Çev.:Tomris Uyar)

was wir sind, ist unsere eigene Erinnerung, wir sind jenes trügerische Museum veränderlicher Formen, jener Haufen Spiegelscherben

Cambiará el universo pero yo no, pensé con melancólica vanidad; alguna vez, lo sé, mi vana devoción la había exasperado; muerta, yo podía consagrarme a su memoria, sin esperanza, pero también sin humillación.

The years pass and I've told this story so many times I no longer know whether I remember it as it was or whether it's only my words I'm remembering.

Comprendí que el trabajo del poeta no estaba en la poesía; estaba en la invención de razones para que la poesía fuera admirable; naturalmente, ese ulterior trabajo modificaba la obra para él, pero no para otro.

I am not certain whether I ever believed in the City of the Immortals; I think the task of finding it was enough for me.

I still hold two images of the ranch – the one I brought with me and the one my eyes finally saw.

I will pause to consider this eternity from which the subsequent ones derive.

Sometimes I suspect that good readers are even blacker and rarer swans than good writers.

I reverently fondled the silky volumes of a certain Chinese encyclopaedia whose finely brushed characters seemed to me more mysterious than the spots on a leopard's skin.

Time can't be measured in days the way money is measured in pesos and centavos, because all pesos are equal, while every day, perhaps every hour, is different.

My story will be true to reality or, in any case, to my personal memory of reality, which amounts to the same thing.

But then, all our lives we postpone everything that can be postponed; perhaps we all have the certainty, deep inside, that we are immortal, and that sooner or later every man will do everything, know all there is to know.

Gradual blindness is not a tragedy. It's like a slow summer dusk.

Por el amor, que nos deja ver a los otros como los ve la divinidad.

AteÅŸi düÅŸündüm, ama sonsuz bir kitab?n yak?lmas?n?n da sonsuz olmas?ndan ve yeryüzünü duman?yla boÄŸabilmesinden ürktüm.

God made Himself totally a man but a man to the point of infamy, a man to the point of reprobation and the abyss. To save us, He could have chosen *any* of the destinies which make up the complex web of history; He could have been Alexander or Pythagoras or Rurik or Jesus; He chose the vilest destiny of all: He was Judas.

I Fear the mirror may disclose The true, unvarnished visage of my soul, Bruised by shadows, black and blue with guilt- The face God sees, that men perhaps see too.

perhaps the intentions of the poet are not that important. What is important nowadays is that although Homer might have thought he was telling that story, he was actually telling something far finer: the story of a man, a hero, who is attacking a city he knows he will never conquer, who knows he will die before it falls; and the still more stirring tale of men defending a city whose doom is already known to them, a city that is already in flames.

Con otra voz dijo que la guerra servía,como la mujer,para q se probaran los hombres,y que,antes de entrar en batalla,nadie sabía quién es.