Best quotes by Jorge Luis Borges

As to my writing short pieces, there are two reasons I can give you. The first is my invincible laziness. The second is that I've always been fond of short stories, and it always took me some trouble to get through a novel.

LifeLiteratureImprecision is tolerable and verisimilar in literature, because we always tend towards it in life.

KnowledgeSelf-AwarenessLiteratureGuiltLibrariesLike all those possessing a library, Aurelian was aware that he was guilty of not knowing his in its entirety.

MemoryWordsAs the end approaches, there are no longer any images from memory - there are only words.

NovelsStorytellingUnlike the novel, a short story may be, for all purposes, essential.

DreamsWritingWriting is only a guided dream.

TimeResilienceAgingTransformationOn the floor, and hanging on to the bar, squatted an old man, immobile as an object. His years had reduced and polished him as water does a stone or the generations of men do a sentence.

PoetsI secretly assumed, as poets do, The duty on me to define the moon.

HumanityWhatever one man does, it is as if all men did it. For that reason, it is not unfair that one disobedience in a garden should contaminate all humanity; for that reason it is not unjust that the crucifixion of a single Jew should be sufficient to save it.

BooksPastWritingForgettingReadersI can’t talk about my books. I have written them and tried to forget them. I have written once, and readers have read me many times, no? I try to think of what I wrote, it’s very unhealthy to think about the past, the case of elegies is very sad, as much as the case of complaints.

CreativityInspirationIntrospectionSelf-ReflectionWriter's BlockI know that when I think of myself as being utterly worn out, when I think that somehow I have nothing more to write, then something is happening within me. And, in due course, it bubbles up; it comes to the surface, and then I do my best to listen. But there's nothing mystical about all this. I suppose all writers do the same.

BooksAmbitionWritingLiteratureThe exercise of letters is sometimes linked to the ambition to construct an absolute book, a book of books that includes the others like a Platonic archetype, an object whose virtues are not diminished by the passage of time.

The people of Tlön are taught that the act of counting modifies the amount counted, turning indefinites into definites. The fact that several persons counting the same quantity come to the same result is for the psychologists of Tlön an example of the association of ideas or of memorization.

TechnologyYou don't have to try to be contemporary. You are already contemporary. What one has in mythology is being evolved all the time. Personally, I think I can do with Greek and Old Norse mythology. For example, I don't think I stand in need of planes or of railways or of cars.

CreativityPhilosophyWritingExistenceRealityThe certainty that everything has already been written annuls us, or renders us phantasmal.

Lully's machine, Mill's fear and Lasswitz's chaotic library can be the subject of jokes, but they exaggerate a propensity which is common: making metaphysics and the arts into a kind of play with combinations.

WritingPoetryProseI don't think there's any essential difference, at least for me, between writing poetry and writing prose.

Self-ExpressionMistakesWriting StyleI try to avoid purple patches, fine writing, all that kind of thing... because I think they're a mistake. And then sometimes it comes through and sometimes it doesn't, but that's not up to me. It's up to chance.

Self-DoubtMy friends tell me that I am an intruder, that I don't really write when I attempt poetry. But those of my friends who write in prose say that I'm no writer when I attempt prose. So really I don't know what to do, I'm in a quandary.

LiteratureFor myth is at the beginning of literature, and also at its end.

LiteratureIn the order of literature, as in others, there is no act that is not the coronation of an infinite series of causes and the source of an infinite series of effects.

There is a concept which corrupts and upsets all others. I refer not to Evil, whose limited realm is that of ethics; I refer to the infinite.

UncertaintyI have known uncertainty: a state unknown to the Greeks.

CreativityUncertaintyWritingI hardly know what I'm going to write - an article, a story, a poem in free verse - or in some regular form. I only know that when I have the first sentence. And when the first sentence makes a kind of pattern, then I find out the kind of rhythm I'm looking for.

TimeLifePerceptionExistenceThe steps a man takes from the day of his birth until that of his death trace in time an inconcievable figure. The Divine Mind intuitively grasps that form immediately, as men do a triangle.

ThoughtsFeelingsSymbolismIf I write a fantastic story, I'm not writing something willful. On the contrary, I am writing something that stands for my feelings, or for my thoughts. So that, in a sense, a fantastic story is as real and perhaps more real than a mere circumstantial story. Because after all, circumstances come and go, and symbols remain.

IdentitySelf-ExpressionLiteratureAll literature, is, finally autobiographical.

TimeEmotionsLossExistentialismNostalgiaWhat man of us has never felt, walking through the twilight or writing down a date from his past, that he has lost something infinite?

DreamsBusinessI wonder if I have woven through dreams the sexual strife. I don't think so. But after all, my business is to weave dreams. I suppose I may be allowed to choose the material.

UniverseThe universe is composed of an indefinite and perhaps infinite number of hexagonal galleries.

TimePastPerceptionFutureI thought of a labyrinth of labyrinths, of one sinuous spreading labyrinth that would encompass the past and the future . . . I felt myself to be, for an unknown period of time, an abstract perceiver of the world.

PunishmentIslam asserts that on the unappealable Day of Judgment every perpetrator of the image of a living creature will be raised from the dead with his works, and he will be commanded to bring them to life, and he will fail, and be cast out with them into the fires of punishment.

PerceptionRealitySymbolismI am attracted to fantastic writing, and fantastic reading, of course. But I think things that we call fantastic may be real, in the sense of being real symbols.

BalanceWriting StyleIf you using local color in an unobtrusive way, it is all for the good. But if you stress it, the whole thing is artificial. But it should be used, I mean, it's not forbidden. But you don't have to stress it.