Borges Quotes

“As infants, our first victory comes in grasping some bit of the world, usually our mother's fingers. Later we discover that the world, and the things of the world, are grasping us, and have been all along.”
― Stephen King, Just After Sunset

“Si me quieren buscar, búsquenme en los libros. No los lean, por favor, si no obtienen placer.”
― Jorge Luis Borges

“It also occurred to him that throughout history, humankind has told two stories: the story of a lost ship sailing the Mediterranean seas in quest of a beloved isle, and the story of a god who allows himself to be crucified on Golgotha.”
― Jorge Luis Borges, Collected Fictions

“The gods weave misfortunes for men, so that the generations to come will have something to sing about.” Mallarmé repeats, less beautifully, what Homer said; “tout aboutit en un livre,” everything ends up in a book. The Greeks speak of generations that will sing; Mallarmé speaks of an object, of a thing among things, a book. But the idea is the same; the idea that we are made for art, we are made for memory, we are made for poetry, or perhaps we are made for oblivion. But something remains, and that something is history or poetry, which are not essentially different.”
― Jorge Luis Borges, Seven Nights

“La realidad no suele coincidir con las previsiones; con lógica perversa, prever un detalle circunstancial es impedir que este suceda”
― Jorge Luis Borges, Ficciones

“This book first arose out of a passage in [Jorge Luis] Borges, out of the laughter that shattered, as I read the passage, all the familiar landmarks of my thought—our thought that bears the stamp of our age and our geography—breaking up all the ordered surfaces and all the planes with which we are accustomed to tame the wild profusion of existing things, and continuing long afterwards to disturb and threaten with collapse our age-old distinction between the Same and the Other. This passage quotes a ‘certain Chinese encyclopaedia’ in which it is written that ‘animals are divided into: (a) belonging to the Emperor, (b) embalmed, (c) tame, (d) suckling pigs, (e) sirens, (f) fabulous, (g) stray dogs, (h) included in the present classification, (i) frenzied, (j) innumerable, (k) drawn with a very fine camelhair brush, (l) et cetera, (m) having just broken the water pitcher, (n) that from a long way off look like flies’. In the wonderment of this taxonomy, the thing we apprehend in one great leap, the thing that, by means of the fable, is demonstrated as the exotic charm of another system of thought, is the limitation of our own, the stark impossibility of thinking that.”
― Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences

“The three of them knew it. She was Kafka’s mistress. Kafka had dreamt her. The three of them knew it. He was Kafka’s friend. Kafka had dreamt him. The three of them knew it. The woman said to the friend, Tonight I want you to have me. The three of them knew it. The man replied: If we sin, Kafka will stop dreaming us. One of them knew it. There was no longer anyone on earth. Kafka said to himself Now the two of them have gone, I’m left alone. I’ll stop dreaming myself.”
― Jorge Luis Borges

“A writer always begins by being too complicated—he’s playing at several games at once.”
― Jorge Luis Borges

“Their books are also different. Works of fiction contain a single plot, with all its imaginable permutations. Those of a philosophical nature invariably include both the thesis and the antithesis, the rigorous pro and con of a doctrine. A book which does not contain its counterbook is considered incomplete.”
― Jorge Luis Borges, Everything and Nothing

“In the dreaming man's dream, the dreamed man awoke.”
― Jorge Luis Borges, The Circular Ruins

“To be not a man, but the projection of another man's dream- what incomparable humiliation, what vertigo!”
― Jorge Luis Borges, The Circular Ruins

“I work in the morning at a manual typewriter. I do about four hours and then go running. This helps me shake off one world and enter another. Trees, birds, drizzle — it’s a nice kind of interlude.
Then I work again, later afternoon, for two or three hours. Back into book time, which is transparent — you don’t know it’s passing. No snack food or coffee. No cigarettes — I stopped smoking a long time ago. The space is clear, the house is quiet. A writer takes earnest measures to secure his solitude and then finds endless ways to squander it. Looking out the window, reading random entries in the dictionary.
To break the spell I look at a photograph of Borges, a great picture sent to me by the Irish writer Colm Tóibín. The face of Borges against a dark background — Borges fierce, blind, his nostrils gaping, his skin stretched taut, his mouth amazingly vivid; his mouth looks painted; he’s like a shaman painted for visions, and the whole face has a kind of steely rapture.
I’ve read Borges of course, although not nearly all of it, and I don’t know anything about the way he worked — but the photograph shows us a writer who did not waste time at the window or anywhere else. So I’ve tried to make him my guide out of lethargy and drift, into the otherworld of magic, art, and divination.”
― Don DeLillo

“El arte de la noche ha invadido el arte de la vida.”
― Rafael Perez Gay

“I kept getting close to happiness and have stood in the shadow of suffering.”
― Jorge Luis Borges, Selected Poems

“Maxims & Other Quotes

If you need an adjective or adverb, you're still fishing for he right noun or verb. 34

Was this a true story? It seemed somehow unimaginable, a fantasy of some kind. But he told it with such conviction that, against my own wishes, I believed him.

Was this indeed the essence of storytelling? Did one simply have to relate a tale in a believable fashion, with the authority of the imagination? 36

Memory is a mirror that may easily shatter. 81

Readers become invisible even to themselves. Only the story lives. It’s the fate of the writer, yes, as well, to disappear. ~ Alastair Reid 83

‘There is only now,’ Borges exclaimed with unstoppable force. ‘Act, dear boy! Do not procrastinate! It’s the worst of sins. I’ve thought about this, you see: the progression toward evil. Murder, this is very bad, a sin. It leads to thievery. And thievery, of course, leads to drunkenness and Sabbath-breaking. And Sabbath-breaking leads to incivility and at last procrastination. A slippery slope into the pit!’ 98

Borges: I no longer need to save face. This is one of the benefits of extreme age. Nothing matters much, and very little matters at all. 100

Borges: Believe me, you will one day read Don Quixote with a profound sense of recollection. This happens when you read a classic. It finds you where you have been. 102

Parini: I try not to think of the phallus, except when I can think of nothing else, which is most of the time.
Borges: This is the fate of young men, a limited focus. One of the few advantages of my blindness has been that I no longer focus my eyes on objects of arousal. I look inward now, though the mind has mountains, dangerous cliffs. 105

Borges: Writers are always pirates, marauding, taking whatever pleases them from others, shaping these stolen goods to our purposes. Writers feed off the corpses of those who passed before them, their precursors. On the other hand they invent their precursors. They create them in their own image, as God did with man.108

Borges: Nobody can teach you anything. That’s the first truth. We teach ourselves. 115

Borges: One should avoid strong emotion, especially when it interferes with the work at hand. We have European blood in our veins, you and I. Mine is northern blood. We’re cold people, you see. Warriors. 125

Borges: The influence of Quixote was such that Sancho acquired a taste for literary wisdom. Such wisdom in his aphorisms! ‘One can find a remedy for everything but death.’ Or this: ‘Make yourself into honey and the flies will devour you.’ 151
Borges: You see, I designed my work for the tiniest audience, ‘fit company though few.’ A writer’s imagination should not be diluted by crowds! 151

Borges: If you don’t abandon the spirit, the spirit will not abandon you. 181”
― Jay Parini, Borges and Me: An Encounter

“Maxims & Other Quotes II
Exactly how we deal with our souls was at this moment the only question I thought worth asking. 181

Borges: What I most admire about Whitman is that he created Walt Whitman, an ideal projection not of himself but someone like him, a character every reader could find in his heart and admire. 184

Borges: Mythos, in Greek, is not a story that is false, it’s a story that is more than true. Myth is a tear in the fabric of reality, and immense energies pour through those holy fissures. Our stories, our poems, are rips in these holy fissures, as well, however slight. 193

Borges: Don’t question survival, mine or yours. More powers lie at your disposal than you realize. 194

Parini: I just don’t know enough.
Borges: Nor I. But we all proceed on insufficient knowledge. 195

Borges: I’ve found a name for myself. Borges the Reenactor! The problem is, one never wins old battles. The losses only mount. 250

Borges: Remember that the battle between good and evil persists, and the writer’s work is constantly to reframe the argument, so that readers make the right choices. Never work from vanity. … What does Eliot say? ‘Humility is endless’ … We fail, and we fail again. We pick ourselves up. I’ve done it a thousand times, Guiseppe. Borges only deepens. 251”
― Jay Parini, Borges and Me: An Encounter

“Fecho os olhos e vejo um bando de pássaros. A visão dura um segundo ou talvez menos; não sei quantos pássaros vi. Era definido ou indefinido o seu número? [...] Se Deus existe, o número é definido, porque Deus sabe quantos pássaros vi. Se Deus não existe, o número é indefinido, pois ninguém conhecerá ao certo a sua conta.”
― Jorge Luis Borges

“On February 14th, I got a telegraph from Buenos Aires.”
― Jorge Luis Borges, Funes el Memorioso

“Στις 14 Φεβρουαρίου, πήρα ένα τηλεγράφημα απ'το Μπουένος 'Αιρες”
― Jorge Luis Borges, Άπαντα τα πεζά [I]

“En todas las ficciones, cada vez que un hombre se enfrenta con diversas alternativas, opta por una y elimina las otras.”
― Jorge Luis Borges, Ficciones

“One should not believe that reality is equally distributed over the surface of the globe as if we were dealing with an objective world that was equal for everyone. Zones, entire continents have not seen the appearance of reality and its principle: they are underdeveloped in this generic sense that is more profound than the economic, technical or political. The West, after passing through a (historic) stage of reality, entered the (virtual) stage of ultra-reality. By contrast, a majority of the "rest of the world" have not even reached the stage of reality and (economic, political, etc.) rationality. Between the two, there are zones of reality, interstices, alveoli, shreds of reality that survive in the heart of globalization and the hyper-reality of networks-a bit like the shreds of territory that float to the surface of the map in Borges' fable. One could speak of an index of reality, a rate of reality on the planet that could be mapped out like birthrates or the levels of atmospheric pollution.What would the maximum rate of reality be?”
― Jean Baudrillard, The Agony of Power

“La teología de Borges es el juego de un descreído y es motivo de una hermosa literatura. ¿Cómo explicar, entonces, su admiración por Léon Bloy? ¿No admirará en él, nostálgicamente, la fe y la fuerza? Siempre me ha llamado la atención que admire a compadres y a guapos de facón en la cintura.

Por eso planteo estas cuestiones:
¿Le falta una fe a Borges?
¿No estarán condenados a algún Infierno los que descreen?
¿No será Borges ese Infierno?
A usted, Borges, heresiarca del arrabal porteño, latinista del lunfardo, suma de infinitos bibliotecarios hipostáticos, mezcla rara de Asia Menor y Palermo, de Chesterton y Carriego, de Kafka y Martín Fierro; a usted, Borges, lo veo ante todo como un Gran Poeta.

Y luego, así: arbitrario, genial, tierno, relojero, débil, grande, triunfante, arriesgado, temeroso, fracasado, magnífico, infeliz, limitado, infantil e inmortal.”
― Ernesto Sabato, Uno y el Universo

“(..) conto "O livro de areia"(…) existência de um livro infinito, isto é, um volume que se desdobra em um número ilimitado de páginas e que, como as partículas da areia, carece de princípio e de fim.(…) pelas possibilidades de leitura que ela oferece, a obra literária de Borges figura-se infinita; nela nenhuma página é a primeira, nenhuma, a última.”
― Ana Cecilia Olmos, Por que ler Borges

“(…) o tempo ensinou-lhe algumas astúcias:
"Evitar os sinônimos, que têm a desvantagem de sugerir diferenças imaginárias; evitar hispanismos, argentinismos, arcaísmos e neologismos; preferir as palavras habituais às palavras assombrosas; intercalar em um relato traços circunstanciais, exigidos agora pelo leitor; simular pequenas incertezas, já que, se a realidade é precisa, a memória não o é; narrar os fatos (isto aprendi em Kipling e nas sagas da Islândia) como se não os entendesse totalmente; lembrar que as normas anteriores não são obrigações e que o tempo se encarregará de abolilas".”
― Ana Cecilia Olmos, Por que ler Borges

“(…)dos anos 1920. A inovação estética daquele primeiro livro de Borges que, como ele explica na sua autobiografia, "celebrava os crepúsculos, os lugares solitários e as esquinas desconhecidas" da cidade de Buenos Aires e estava escrito "em um estilo despojado que era pródigo em metáforas lacônicas", destituía definitivamente os excessos rítmicos è melódicos da retórica simbolista de Lugones.”
― Ana Cecilia Olmos, Por que ler Borges

“Creio que a poesia é algo tão íntimo, algo tão essencial, que não pode ser definido sem se diluir. Seria como tentar definir a cor amarela, o amor, a queda das folhas no outono... Eu não sei como podemos definir as coisas essenciais.
Penso que a única definição possível seria a de Platão, precisamente porque não é uma definição, senão porque é um fato poético. Ouando ele fala da poesia diz: "Essa coisa leve, alada e sagrada".
Isso, eu acredito, pode definir, de certa forma, a poesia, já que não a define de um modo rígido, senão que oferece à imaginação essa imagem de um anjo ou de um pássaro.


Conversaciones con Borges, Roberto Alifano, 1984”
― Ana Cecilia Olmos, Por que ler Borges

“Eu aconselharia esta hipótese: a imprecisão é tolerável ou verossímil na literatura, porque sempre tendemos a ela na realidade. A simplificação conceitual de estados complexos é muitas vezes uma operação instantânea. O próprio fato de perceber, de levar em conta, é de ordem seletiva: toda atenção, toda fixacão de nossa consciência. comporta uma missão deliberada do não interessante.


“A postulação da realidade”, Discussão, 1932”
― Ana Cecilia Olmos, Por que ler Borges

“Sorry about falling asleep again. I understand that having your main character fall asleep every page break is a big no-no in the world of fiction, but oh well. I’m also not allowed to look in a mirror. And I’m not allowed to digress. But here we are. I like books that pass out, peer into forbidden mirrors, and have jeremiads. And I bet if you’re an Atleby fan, you’re into dreams, mirrors, and asides too.”
― Chase Griffin

“Physis (Emerging-Abiding Sway), yes that’s the oink thing’s
christian name, the café’s semi-official mascot, philosophical provocateur, and occasionally extradimensional notary, chose this
exact moment to poke his head, feathered, contemplative, and
faintly iridescent, through the bead curtain that separated the main
patio from what the proprietor called the “Reflexology Lounge,”
but which was, in truth, just where they stored the broken espresso
machine and three cursed stools. Physis tilted his head, blinked
once, slowly, as if absorbing not light but context, and let out a
warbling honk that echoed like a misremembered thesis defense.
He was, as ever, the embodiment of that which emerges and then
stubbornly, inexplicably abides.
And then, as mysteriously as he had arrived, he withdrew.”
― Chase Griffin, Schlemiel Gaucho: An Improv Comedy Magick Grimoire

“Glory is an incomprehension, and perhaps the worst.”
― Jorge Luis Borges, Pierre Menard, autor del Quijote