Unlike the novel, a short story may be, for all purposes, essential. — Jorge Luis Borges Copy Share Image
“They seek neither truth nor likelihood; they seek astonishment. They think metaphysics is a branch of the literature of fantasy” — Jorge Luis Borges Copy Share Image
Literature is not exhaustible, for the sufficient and simple reason that a single book is not. — Jorge Luis Borges Copy Share Image
“The fact is that every author creates his own precursors. His work modifies our conception of the past, as it will modify… — Jorge Luis Borges Copy Share Image
I think that the reader should enrich what he is reading. He should misunderstand the text; he should change it into something… — Jorge Luis Borges Copy Share Image
Imprecision is tolerable and verisimilar in literature, because we always tend towards it in life. — Jorge Luis Borges Copy Share Image
One literature differs from another, either before or after it, not so much because of the text as for the manner in… — Jorge Luis Borges Copy Share Image
If a writer disbelieves what he is writing, then he can hardly expect his reader to believe it. — Jorge Luis Borges Copy Share Image
“If the characters of a fictional work can be readers or spectators, we, its readers or spectators, can be fictions.” — Jorge Luis Borges Copy Share Image
“There are those who cannot imagine a world without birds; there are those who cannot imagine a world without water; but in… — Jorge Luis Borges Copy Share Image
In the order of literature, as in others, there is no act that is not the coronation of an infinite series of… — Jorge Luis Borges Copy Share Image
“The critics often invent authors; they select two dissimilar works - the Tao Te Ching and the 1001 Nights, say - attribute… — Jorge Luis Borges Copy Share Image
“When writers die they become books, which is, after all, not too bad an incarnation." [As attributed by Alastair Reid in Neruda… — Jorge Luis Borges Copy Share Image
I believe books will never disappear. It is impossible for it to happen. Of all man's diverse tools, undoubtedly the most astounding… — Jorge Luis Borges Copy Share Image
Personally, I am a hedonistic reader; I have never read a book merely because it was ancient. I read books for the… — Jorge Luis Borges Copy Share Image
“The author of an atrocious undertaking ought to imagine that he has already accomplished it, ought to impose upon himself a future… — Jorge Luis Borges Copy Share Image
I have preferred to teach my students not English literature but my love for certain authors, or, even better, certain pages, or… — Jorge Luis Borges Copy Share Image
“The famed author Robert Lewis Stevenson declared that he'd trained his Brownies to be writers. As he slept, they would whisper fantastic… — Jorge Luis Borges Copy Share Image
“Their books are also different. Works of fiction contain a single plot, with all its imaginable permutations. Those of a philosophical nature… — Jorge Luis Borges Copy Share Image
Literature is not exhaustible, for the sufficient and simple reason that a single book is not. A book is not an isolated… — Jorge Luis Borges Copy Share Image
Sometimes, looking at the many books I have at home, I feel I shall die before I come to the end of… — Jorge Luis Borges Copy Share Image
A book is more than a verbal structure or series of verbal structures; it is the dialogue it establishes with its reader… — Jorge Luis Borges Copy Share Image
“The composition of vast books is a laborious and impoverishing extravagance. To go on for five hundred pages developing an idea whose… — Jorge Luis Borges Copy Share Image
“It is a laborious madness and an impoverishing one, the madness of composing vast books - setting out in five hundred pages… — Jorge Luis Borges Copy Share Image
My books standing there on the shelf do not know that I have written them. — 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. — Jorge Luis Borges Copy Share Image
As to my writing short pieces, there are two reasons I can give you. The first is my invincible laziness. The second… — Jorge Luis Borges Copy Share Image
I know of one semibarbarous zone whose librarians repudiate the "vain and superstitious habit" of trying to find sense in books, equating… — Jorge Luis Borges Copy Share Image
Let neither tear nor reproach besmirch this declaration of the mastery of God who, with magnificent irony, granted me both the gift… — Jorge Luis Borges Copy Share Image
The European and the North American consider that a book that has been awarded any kind of prize must be good; the… — Jorge Luis Borges Copy Share Image
“Before unearthing this letter, I had questioned myself about the ways in which a book can be infinite. I could think of… — 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