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The certainty that everything has already been written annuls us, or renders us phantasmal.
Jorge Luis Borges
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Jorge Luis Borges
Age: 86 †
Born: 1899
Born: August 24
Died: 1986
Died: March 26
Librarian
Literary Critic
Poet
Screenwriter
Translator
Writer
Buenos Ayres
Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges
Chorche Louis Borches
Jorge Luis Borges Acevedo
Horhe Luis Borhes
J. L. Borges
H. Bustos Domecq
Khorkhe Luyis Borkhes
Borges
Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo
Already
Written
Everything
Renders
Certainty
More quotes by Jorge Luis Borges
What will die with me when I die, what pathetic or fragile form will the world lose?
Jorge Luis Borges
I don't think esthetic schools are important. What is important is the use that is made of them, or whatever the individual writer does.
Jorge Luis Borges
We did meet forty years ago. At that time we were both influenced by Whitman and I said, jokingly in part, 'I don't think anything can be done in Spanish, do you?' Neruda agreed, but we decided it was too late for us to write our verse in English. We'd have to make the best of a second-rate literature.
Jorge Luis Borges
The execution was set for the 29th of March, at nine in the morning. This delay was due to a desire on the part of the authorities to act slowly and impersonally, in the manner of planets or vegetables.
Jorge Luis Borges
I have sometimes suspected that the only thing that holds no mystery is happiness, because it is its own justification.
Jorge Luis Borges
I have no personal system of philosophy. I never attempt to do that. I am merely a man of letters.
Jorge Luis Borges
Perhaps the apparent favor of the universe is no more than the crocodile grin of a Doberman breathing hard and about to be hungry?
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
The tango is a direct expression of something that poets have often tried to state in words: the belief that a fight may be a celebration.
Jorge Luis Borges
Reality is not always probable, or likely.
Jorge Luis Borges
Every writer creates his own precursors. His work modifies our conception of the past, as it will modify the future.
Jorge Luis Borges
I try to avoid purple patches, fine writing, all that kind of thing... because I think they're a mistake. And then sometimes it comes through and sometimes it doesn't, but that's not up to me. It's up to chance.
Jorge Luis Borges
The dictionary is based on the hypothesis -- obviously an unproven one -- that languages are made up of equivalent synonyms.
Jorge Luis Borges
Literature is not exhaustible, for the sufficient and simple reason that a single book is not. A book is not an isolated entity: it is a narration, an axis of innumerable narrations. One literature differs from another, either before or after it, not so much because of the text as for the manner in which it is read.
Jorge Luis Borges
Poets, like the blind, can see in the dark.
Jorge Luis Borges
In fact I'm in too much of a mental muddle to know where I am - an idealist or not. I'm a mere man of letters, and I do what I can with those subjects.
Jorge Luis Borges
A book is a physical object in a world of physical objects. It is a set of dead symbols. And then the right reader comes along, and the words—or rather the poetry behind the words, for the words themselves are mere symbols—spring to life, and we have a resurrection of the word.
Jorge Luis Borges
Time is a fire that consumes me, but I am the fire.
Jorge Luis Borges
In all fiction, when a man is faced with alternatives he chooses one at the expense of others.
Jorge Luis Borges
Translations are a partial and precious documentation of the changes the text suffers.
Jorge Luis Borges
