Quotes from Jorge Luís Borges

The fact is that all writers create their precursors. Their work modifies our conception of the past, just as it is bound to modify the future.

Every writer creates his own precursors.

I have known what the Greeks did not: uncertainty.

On some shelf in some hexagon, it was argued, there must exist a book that is the cipher and perfect compendium of all other books, and some librarian must have examined that book; this librarian is analogous to a god.

In all the world, one man has been born, one man has died.

Any life is made up of a single moment, the moment in which a man finds out, once and for all, who he is.

The truth is that we live out our lives putting off all that can be put off perhaps we all know deep down that we are immortal and that sooner or later all men will do and know all things.

It would be exaggerating to say that our relationship is hostile; I live, I let myself live, so that Borges can weave his literature and that literature justifies me…. I don't know which of us is writing this page.

Like all writers, he measured the achievements of others by what they had accomplished, asking of them that they measure him by what he envisaged or planned.

My father and he had one of those English friendships which begin by avoiding intimacies and eventually eliminate speech altogether.

One concept corrupts and confuses the others. I am not speaking of the Evil whose limited sphere is ethics; I am speaking of the infinite.

Time is the substance from which I am made. Time is a river which carries me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger that devours me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire that consumes me, but I am the fire.

I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.

I am not sure that I exist, actually. I am all the writers that I have read, all the people that I have met, all the women that I have loved; all the cities I have visited.

I cannot sleep unless I am surrounded by books.

Let others pride themselves about how many pages they have written; I'd rather boast about the ones I've read.

A writer - and, I believe, generally all persons - must think that whatever happens to him or her is a resource. All things have been given to us for a purpose, and an artist must feel this more intensely. All that happens to us, including our humiliations, our misfortunes, our embarrassments, all is given to us as raw material, as clay, so that we may shape our art.

To fall in love is to create a religion that has a fallible god.

So plant your own gardens and decorate your own soul, instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers.

Don't talk unless you can improve the silence.

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.

You have wakened not out of sleep, but into a prior dream, and that dream lies within another, and so on, to infinity, which is the number of grains of sand. The path that you are to take is endless, and you will die before you have truly awakened.

Time is the substance I am made of. Time is a river which sweeps me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger which destroys me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire which consumes me, but I am the fire.

The mind was dreaming. The world was its dream.