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Then he reflected that reality does not usually coincide with our anticipation of it with a logic of his own he inferred that to forsee a circumstantial detail is to prevent its happening. Trusting in this weak magic, he invented, so that they would not happen, the most gruesome details.

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
Reality
Details
Coincide
Doe
Logic
Reflected
Would
Happening
Trusting
Weak
Detail
Usually
Anticipation
Forsee
Magic
Invented
Circumstantial
Happen
Prevent
Inferred
Happens
Happenings
Gruesome

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Poets, like the blind, can see in the dark.
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My friends tell me that I am an intruder, that I don't really write when I attempt poetry. But those of my friends who write in prose say that I'm no writer when I attempt prose. So really I don't know what to do, I'm in a quandary.
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We accept reality so readily - perhaps because we sense that nothing is real.
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I have no personal system of philosophy. I never attempt to do that. I am merely a man of letters.
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When one confesses to an act, one ceases to be an actor in it and becomes its witness, becomes a man that observes and narrates it and no longer the man that performed it.
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It means much to have loved, to have been happy, to have laid my hand on the living Garden, even for a day.
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From my weakness, I drew strength that never left me.
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We have stopped believing in progress. What progress that is !
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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.
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I have no way of knowing whether the events that I am about to narrate are effects or causes.
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That is what always happens: we never know whether we are victors or whether we are defeated.
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The word happiness exists in every language it is plausible the thing itself exists.
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I hardly know what I'm going to write - an article, a story, a poem in free verse - or in some regular form. I only know that when I have the first sentence. And when the first sentence makes a kind of pattern, then I find out the kind of rhythm I'm looking for.
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Perhaps the apparent favor of the universe is no more than the crocodile grin of a Doberman breathing hard and about to be hungry?
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Many people have thought of me as a thinker, as a philosopher, or even as a mystic. Well the truth is that though I have found reality perplexing enough - in fact, I find it gets more perplexing all the time - I never think of myself as a thinker.
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Reality is not always probable, or likely. But if you're writing a story, you have to make it as plausible as you can, because if not, the reader's imagination will reject it.
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As a boy, I used to marvel that the letters in a closed book did not get scrambled and lost overnight.
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For me, beauty is a physical sensation, something we feel with our whole body. It is not the result of judgement. We do not arrive at it by way of rules. We either feel beauty or we don't.
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What will die with me the day I die? What pathetic or frail image will be lost to the world? The voice of Macedonio Fernandez, the image of a bay horse in a vacant lot on the corner of Sarrano and Charcas, a bar of sulfur in the drawer of a mahogany desk?
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Yo, que me figuraba el Paraíso / Bajo la especie de una biblioteca. I have always imagined Paradise as a kind of library.
Jorge Luis Borges