Jorge Luis Borges Quotes

240 Sourced Quotes

I 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.

Jorge Luis Borges

I 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.

Jorge Luis Borges

I am almost sure to be blotted out by death, but sometimes I think it is not impossible that I may continue to live in some other manner after my physical death. Or, as Hamlet wonders, what dreams will come when we leave this body?

Jorge Luis Borges

I have tried (I am not sure how successfully) to write plain tales. I dare not say they are simple; there is not a simple page, a simple word, on earth - - for all pages, all words, predicate the universe, whose most notorious attribute is its complexity.

Jorge Luis Borges

You may win your heart's desire, but in the end you're cheated of it by death.

Jorge Luis Borges

You boil it in saw dust: you salt it in glue: You condense it with locust and tape: Still keeping one principle object in view - To preserve its symmetrical shape.

Jorge Luis Borges

Blindness has not been for me a total misfortune; it should not be seen in a pathetic way. It should be seen as a way of life: one of the styles of living.

Jorge Luis Borges

We are our memory, we are that chimerical museum of shifting shapes, that pile of broken mirrors.

Jorge Luis Borges

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

Jorge Luis Borges

The man who has learned that three plus one are four doesn't have to go through a proof of that assertion with coins, or dice, or chess pieces, or pencils. He knows it, and that's that. He cannot conceive a different sum. There are mathematicians who say that three plus one is a tautology for four, a different way of saying "four"... If three plus one can be two, or fourteen, then reason is madness.

Jorge Luis Borges

I confess that I have not cleared a path through all seven hundred pages, I confess to having examined only bits and pieces, and yet I know what it is, with that bold and legitimate certainty with which we assert our knowledge of a city, without ever having been rewarded with the intimacy of all the many streets it includes.

Jorge Luis Borges

I, who have been so many men in vain, want to be one man, myself alone. From out of a whirlwind the voice of God replied: I am not, either. I dreamed the world the way you dreamed your work, my Shakespeare: one of the forms of my dream was you, who, like me, are many and one.

Jorge Luis Borges

I might accept immortality, if I had to do it. But I would prefer - if there is any afterlife - to know nothing whatever about Borges, about his experiences in this world.

Jorge Luis Borges

As a boy, I used to marvel that the letters in a closed book did not get scrambled and lost overnight.

Jorge Luis Borges

I think it's all to the good that a writer shouldn't be too famous. Because, in a country where a writer may be famous, he may be pandering to the mob, celebrity and so on.

Jorge Luis Borges

For me, beauty is a physical sensation, something we feel with our whole body. It is not the result of judgement. We do not arrive at it by way of rules. We either feel beauty or we don't.

Jorge Luis Borges

I write for myself, and perhaps for half a dozen friends. And that should be enough. And that might improve the quality of my writing. But if I were writing for thousands of people, then I would write what might please them. And as I know nothing about them, and maybe I'd have a rather low opinion of them, I don't think that would do any good to my work.

Jorge Luis Borges

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.

Jorge Luis Borges

I'm not interested in the fact that a writer may label himself as being intellectual or anti-intellectual. l'm really interested in the stuff he's turning out.

Jorge Luis Borges

I suppose identity depends on memory. And if my memory is blotted out, then I wonder if I exist - I mean, if I am the same person. Of course, I don't have to solve that problem. It's up to God, if any.

Jorge Luis Borges

Nowadays, one of the churches of Tlön maintains platonically that such and such a pain, such and such a greenish-yellow colour, such and such a temperature, such and such a sound, etc., make up the only reality there is. All men, in the climactic instant of coitus, are the same man. All men who repeat one line of Shakespeare are William Shakespeare.

Jorge Luis Borges

True and native beauty consists in the just composure and symmetry of the parts of the body.

Jorge Luis Borges

The mathematical sciences wield their particular language made of digits and signs, no less subtle than any other.

Jorge Luis Borges

I ask of any God, of any gods, that if they give immortality, I hope to be granted oblivion also.

Jorge Luis Borges

I 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.

Jorge Luis Borges

I would rather like to think of God as being a kind of adventurer - even as Wells thought about him - or perhaps as something within us making for some unknown purpose.

Jorge Luis Borges

Had I to give advice to writers (and I do not think they need it, because everyone has to find out things for himself), I would tell them simply this; I would ask them to tamper as little as they can with their own work. I do not think tinkering does any good. The moment comes when one has found out what one can do - when one has found one's natural voice, one's rhythm. Then I do not think that slight emendations should prove useful.

Jorge Luis Borges

The future has no other reality than as present hope, and the past is no more than present memory.

Jorge Luis Borges

The 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.

Jorge Luis Borges

When I feel I'm going to write something, then I just am quiet and I try to listen. Then something comes through. And I do what I can in order not to tamper with it.

Jorge Luis Borges