Quotes About Borges

If one had never had the good fortune of meeting Borges, then meeting his library was the next best thing

Ahmed, who regarded himself as an expert on the works and handwriting of Borges, had accepted the book because he was confident that sooner or later he'd find a buyer: a learned fool or a swindler, in either case, a snob. Maybe he would sell it for a fortune one day. Maybe not. And maybe one day Severina will tear out some of her hair and scatter it over my body.

Writing is a compensatory activity, and literature abounds in cases like his. Borges's pages teem with knives, crimes, and scenes of torture, but the cruelty is kept at a distance by his fine sense of irony and by the cool rationalism of his prose, which never falls into sensationalism or the purely emotional. This lends a statuesque quality to the physical horror, giving it the nature of a work of art set in an unreal world.

The symbol of a setting for a Hemingway story is a boxing ring; for Borges, a library. On the other hand I think Nabokov was a writer quite close to Borges. He had the same rich literary culture, moved with great ease in different languages and traditions, and had a playful approach to literature-literature as an intellectual game, through which, of course, the real truths could appear. But apparently the game was for Nabokov just an exercise devoid of moral substance.

Borges's ethnocentric limitation does not detract from his many other admirable qualities, but it is best not to sidestep it when giving a comprehensive appraisal of his work. Certainly, it is a limitation that offers further proof of his humanity because, as has been said over and over again, there is no such thing as absolute perfection in this world, not even in the world of a creative artist like Borges, who comes as close as anyone to achieving it.

The revolutionary thing about Borges's prose is that it contains almost as many ideas as words, for his precision and concision are absolutes.

I saw Borges very few times. The first time was in Paris, when I was a journalist. I went to interview him and was so impressed I could not speak. I remember one of the questions I asked him was What do you think of politics? He gave me an answer I have always remembered. He told me it was una de las formas del tedio (one of the forms of tedium).

Mi pálpito es que Borges nunca leyó a Onetti y probablemente la sola idea que guardaba de él tenía que ver con aquel frustrado encuentro en una cervecería porteña y las provocaciones antijamesianas del escritor uruguayo.

Para el escritor latinoamericano, Borges significó la ruptura de un cierto complejo de inferioridad que, de manera inconsciente, por supuesto, lo inhibía de abordar ciertos asuntos y lo encarcelaba dentro de un horizonte provinciano.

El estilo borgiano es uno de los milagros estéticos del siglo que termina, un estilo que desinfló la lengua española de la elefantiasis retórica, del énfasis y la reiteración que la asfixiaban, que la depuró hasta casi la anorexia y obligó a ser luminosamente inteligente

Dentro de esta tradición, la prosa literaria creada por Borges es una anomalía, pues desobedece íntimamente la predisposición natural de la lengua española hacia el exceso, optando por la más estricta parquedad.

Borges spune cu destul? dreptate c? Pascal se intereseaz? mai puÅ£in de Dumnezeu, cît de combaterea celor care-l t?g?duiesc. In fond, Pascal avea temperament de polemist. Toat? opera lui e un atac mai mult sau mai puÅ£in deghizat. (Este si motivul pentru care-mi place atît de mult.)

La originalidad de Borges (entre otras, entre las muchas formas de su originalidad) reside en su resistencia a ser encontrado allí donde lo buscamos: algo del viejo vanguardista queda en esa resistencia a responder lo que se le pregunta y ajustarse a lo que se quiere escuchar de él.

El criollismo remite, casi siempre, a la literatura rural, mientras que Borges va a diseñarle un mapa ciudadano; remite también a poéticas más realistas, más representativas y costumbristas que las que Borges despliega en

Borges mira a Buenos Aires desde un espacio recordado, un espacio mítico que él mismo, más que recibir del pasado, impulsa como su propia novedad en la literatura argentina: la ciudad criolla que persiste en la ciudad moderna, la llanura pampeana que se refleja en el patio, en los cercos vivos del suburbio, en las calles "sin vereda de enfrente", es decir las calles que tocan la pampa y se pierden en la extensión de un paisaje familiar.

We are all living in a techno-dystopian fantasy, the Internet-connected portals we rely on rendering the world in all its granular detail and absurdity like Borges's 'Aleph.'

I read Borges, Jorge Luis Borges. He think he too good for me, but I love him . . . he was a blind man who see better than anyone

Las literaturas nacionales como bien señaló Borges ( que tan bien señalaba tantas cosas), son un invento de los nacionalismos europeos del siglo XIX, pero hay que decir que sus imitadores latinoamericanos tuvieron mucho éxito: durante la primera mitad del siglo XX, éste fue el mayor esfuerzo de la novela escrita del otro lado del océano.

The history of Argentinian literature should be divided into two periods: before Borges (before 1941) and after Borges (after 1941).

property, fed on each side by nationalistic stupidity. I summoned the Borges observation: two bald men fighting over a comb.

discovered a classification Jorge Luis Borges devised, claiming that A certain Chinese encyclopedia divides animals into: a. Belonging to the Emperor b. Embalmed c. Tame d. Sucking pigs e. Sirens f. Fabulous g. Stray dogs h. Included in the present classification i. Frenzied j. Innumerable k. Drawn with a very fine camel-hair brush l. Et cetera m. Having just broken the water pitcher n. That from a long way off look like flies.

This is how space begins, with words only, signs traced on the blank page. To describe space: to name it, to trace it, like those portolano-makers who saturated the coastlines with the names of harbours, the names of capes, the names of inlets, until in the end the land was only separated from the sea by a continuous ribbon of text. Is the aleph, that place in Borges from which the entire world is visible simultaneously, anything other than an alphabet?

Borges said there are only four stories to tell: a love story between two people, a love story between three people, the struggle for power and the voyage. All of us writers rewrite these same stories ad infinitum.

As 'Possession' progresses, it seems less and less like the usual satire about academia and more like something by Jorge Luis Borges.