Quotes from Jorge Luís Borges

All language is a set of symbols whose use among its speakers assumes a share past

No hables a menos que puedas mejorar el silencio.

La realidad no suele coincidir con las previsiones; con lógica perversa, prever un detalle circunstancial es impedir que este suceda

I never reread what I've written. I'm far too afraid to feel ashamed of what I've done.

Un hombre se propone la tarea de dibujar el mundo. A lo largo de los años puebla un espacio con imágenes de provincias, de reinos, de montañas, de bahías, de naves, de islas, de peces, de habitaciones, de instrumentos, de astros, de caballos y de personas. Poco antes de morir, descubre que ese paciente laberinto de líneas traza la imagen de su cara.

There is nothing very remarkable about being immortal; with the exception of mankind, all creatures are immortal, for they know nothing of death. What is divine, terrible, and incomprehensible is to know oneself immortal.

To think is to forget a difference, to generalize, to abstract.

God has created nights well-populated with dreams, crowded with mirror images, so that man may feel that he is nothing more than vain reflection. That's what frightens us.

The things that are said in literature are always the same. What is important is the way they are said. Looking for metaphors, for example: When I was a young man I was always hunting for new metaphors. Then I found out that really good metaphors are always the same.

Hay una dignidad en la derrota que a duras penas le corresponde a la victoria.

All theories are legitimate, no matter. What matters is what you do with them.

Image is sorcery.

Things became duplicated in Tlön; they also tend to become effaced and lose their details when they are forgotten. A classic example is the doorway which survived so long as it was visited by a beggar and disappeared at his death. At times some birds, a horse, have saved the ruins of an amphitheater.

I think of reading a book as no less an experience than travelling or falling in love.

A writer, or any man, must believe that whatever happens to him is an instrument; everything has been given for an end. This is even stronger in the case of the artist. Everything that happens, including humiliations, embarrassments, misfortunes, all has been given like clay, like material for one's art. One must accept it.

I believe the secret of the success of psychoanalysis resides in people's vanity.

I know what the Greeks do not know, incertitude.

The web of time - the strands of which approach one another, bifurcate, intersect, or ignore each other through the centuries - embraces every possibility. We do not exist in most of them. In some you exist and not I, while in others I do, and you do not, and in yet others both of us exist.

Whoever would undertake some atrocious enterprise should act as if it were already accomplished should impose upon himself a future as irrevocable as the past.

I think—the hero observes that nothing is so frightening as a labyrinth with no center.

Quienes dicen que el arte no debe propagar doctrinas suelen referirse a doctrinas contrarias a las suyas.

How can we manage to illuminate the pathos of our lives?

La muerte es una vida vivida. La vida es una muerte que viene.

My memory, sir, is like a garbage disposal.