Jorge Luis Borges

Whatever 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.

Writing long books is a laborious and impoverishing act of foolishness: expanding in five hundred pages an idea that could be perfectly explained in a few minutes. A better procedure is to pretend that those books already exist and to offer a summary, a commentary.

"In the critic's vocabulary, the word "precursor" is indispensable, but it should be cleansed of all connotations of polemic or rivalry. The fact is that every writer creates his own precursors. His work modifies our conception of the past, as it will modify the future." — Essay: "Kafka and his Precursors"

Que otros se jacten de las páginas que han escrito; a mí me enorgullecen las que he leído.

So plant your own gardens and decorate your own soul, instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers.

O verbo ler, como o verbo amar e o verbo sonhar, não suporta o modo imperativo. Eu aconselho sempre os meus alunos que se um livro os aborrece o abandonem; que não o leiam porque é famoso, que não o leiam porque é moderno, que não o leiam porque é um clássico. A leitura deve ser uma das formas da felicidade e não se pode obrigar ninguém a ser feliz.

When you reach my age, you realize you couldn't have done things very much better or much worse than you did them in the first place.

The machinery of the world is far too complex for the simplicity of men.

It is love. I will have to run or hide.

The walls of its prison rise up, as in a twisted dream. The beautiful mask has changed, but as always it is the one. Of what use are my talismans: the literary exercises, the vague erudition, the knowledge of words used by the harsh North to sing its seas and swords, the temperate friendship, the galleries of the Library, the common things, the habits, the young love of my mother, the militant shadow of my dead, the timeless night, the taste of dreams?

Being with you or being without you is the measure of my time.

Now the pitcher breaks about the spring, now the man arises to the sound of birds, now those that watch at the windows have gone dark, but the darkness has brought no peace.

It, I know, is love: the anxiety and the relief at hearing your voice, the expectation and the memory, the horror of living in succession.

It is love with its mythologies, with its tiny useless magics.

There exists a corner that I dare not cross.

Now the armies confine me, the hordes.

(This room is unreal; she has not seen it.)

The name of a woman gives me away.

A woman hurts me in all of my body.

We accept reality so readily - perhaps because we sense that nothing is real.

I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.

A book is not an isolated being: it is a relationship, an axis of innumerable relationships

I have no way of knowing whether the events that I am about to narrate are effects or causes.

Happy are the beloved and the lovers and those who can live without love.

The years go by, and I've told the story so many times that I'm not sure anymore whether I actually remember it or whether I just remember the words I tell it with.