For myth is at the beginning of literature, and also at its end. — Jorge Luis Borges Copy Share Image
Every novel is an ideal plane inserted into the realm of reality. — Jorge Luis Borges Copy Share Image
“In art nothing is more secondary than the author's intentions.” — Jorge Luis Borges Copy Share Image
“Poetry is not the books in the library. Poetry is the encounter of the reader with the book, the discovery of the… — Jorge Luis Borges Copy Share Image
A book is not an isolated being: it is a relationship, an axis of innumerable relationships — Jorge Luis Borges Copy Share Image
Im merely a dreamer, and then a writer, and my happiest moments are when I'm a reader. — Jorge Luis Borges Copy Share Image
“If a writer disbelieves what he is writing, then he can hardly expect his readers to believe it.” — Jorge Luis Borges Copy Share Image
I think of reading a book as no less an experience than travelling or falling in love. — Jorge Luis Borges Copy Share Image
When writers die they become books, which is, after all, not too bad an incarnation. — Jorge Luis Borges Copy Share Image
“There is no intellectual exercise that is not ultimately pointless. - Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote” — Jorge Luis Borges Copy Share Image
My father gave me free run of his library. When I think of my boyhood, I think in terms of the books… — Jorge Luis Borges Copy Share Image
The things that are said in literature are always the same. What is important is the way they are said. Looking for… — Jorge Luis Borges Copy Share Image
I can’t talk about my books. I have written them and tried to forget them. I have written once, and readers have… — Jorge Luis Borges Copy Share Image
“This delay (whose importance the reader will appreciate later) was due to a desire on the part of the authorities to act… — Jorge Luis Borges Copy Share Image
Leaving behind the babble of the plaza, I enter the Library. I feel, almost physically, the gravitation of the books, the enveloping… — Jorge Luis Borges Copy Share Image
“So witless did these ideas strike me as being, so sweeping and pompous the way they were expressed, that I associated them… — Jorge Luis Borges Copy Share Image
Writing long books is a laborious and impoverishing act of foolishness: expanding in five hundred pages an idea that could be perfectly… — Jorge Luis Borges Copy Share Image
The exercise of letters is sometimes linked to the ambition to construct an absolute book, a book of books that includes the… — Jorge Luis Borges Copy Share Image
A book is a physical object in a world of physical objects. It is a set of dead symbols. And then the… — Jorge Luis Borges Copy Share Image
“In literary practices the idea of a single subject is also all-powerful. It is uncommon for books to be signed. The concept… — Jorge Luis Borges Copy Share Image
The gods weave misfortunes for men, so that the generations to come will have something to sing about.” Mallarmé repeats, less beautifully,… — Jorge Luis Borges Copy Share Image
I think of myself primarily as a reader, then also a writer, but that's more or less irrelevant. I think I'm a… — Jorge Luis Borges Copy Share Image
Of all man’s instruments, the most wondrous, no doubt, is the book. The other instruments are extensions of his body. The microscope,… — Jorge Luis Borges Copy Share Image
“It is generally understood that a modern-day book may honorably be based upon an older one, especially since, as Dr. Johnson observed,… — Jorge Luis Borges Copy Share Image
“If you sell, say, two thousand copies, it is the same thing as if you had sold nothing at all because two… — Jorge Luis Borges Copy Share Image
At the beginning of their careers many writers have a need to overwrite. They choose carefully turned-out phrases; they want to impress… — Jorge Luis Borges Copy Share Image
“The taste of the apple ... lies in the contact of the fruit with the palate, not in the fruit itself; in… — Jorge Luis Borges Copy Share Image
It is worth remembering that every writer begins with a naively physical notion of what art is. A book for him or… — Jorge Luis Borges Copy Share Image
“I believe that the phrase ‘obligatory reading’ is a contradiction in terms; reading should not be obligatory. Should we ever speak of… — Jorge Luis Borges Copy Share Image
“Emerson said that a library is a magic chamber in which there are many enchanted spirits. They wake when we call them.… — Jorge Luis Borges Copy Share Image
“At my age, one should be aware of one's limits, and this knowledge may make for happiness. When I was young, I… — Jorge Luis Borges Copy Share Image
“When it was proclaimed that the Library contained all books, the first impression was one of extravagant happiness. All men felt themselves… — Jorge Luis Borges Copy Share Image
“The certitude that everything has been written negates us or turns us into phantoms. I know of districts in which the young… — Jorge Luis Borges Copy Share Image
“Let no one reduce to tears or reproach This statement of the mastery of God, Who, with magnificent irony, gave Me at… — Jorge Luis Borges Copy Share Image
The execution was set for the 29th of March, at nine in the morning. This delay was due to a desire on the part… — Jorge Luis Borges Copy Share Image
Like all writers, he measured the achievements of others by what they had accomplished, asking of them that they measure him by what he… — Jorge Luis Borges Copy Share Image
Loneliness does not worry me; life is difficult enough, putting up with yourself and with your own habits. — Jorge Luis Borges Copy Share Image
The fact is that all writers create their precursors. Their work modifies our conception of the past, just as it is bound to modify… — Jorge Luis Borges Copy Share Image
I don't think we're capable of knowledge, but I like to keep an open mind. So if you ask me whether I believe in… — Jorge Luis Borges Copy Share Image
The web of time - the strands of which approach one another, bifurcate, intersect, or ignore each other through the centuries - embraces "every"… — Jorge Luis Borges Copy Share Image
When I write, I do it urged by an intimate necessity. I don't have in mind an exclusive public, or a public of multitudes,… — Jorge Luis Borges Copy Share Image
I foresee that man will resign himself each day to new abominations, and soon that only bandits and soldiers will be left. — Jorge Luis Borges Copy Share Image
![“I believe that the phrase ‘obligatory reading’ is a contradiction in terms; reading should not be obligatory. Should we ever speak of 'obligatory pleasure'? Pleasure is not obligatory, pleasure is something we seek. 'Obligatory happiness'! [...] If a book bores you, leave it; don’t read it because…” quote by Jorge Luis Borges](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/5f6/jorge-luis-borges-275_books_i-believe-that-the-phrase-obligatory-rea_2334935.jpg)
