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A man sets himself the task of portraying the world. Shortly before he dies he discovers that this patient labyrinth of lines is a drawing of his own face.

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
Dies
Discovers
Face
Labyrinth
Faces
Sets
Men
Task
World
Drawing
Tasks
Patient
Shortly
Lines
Portraying

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Unlike the novel, a short story may be, for all purposes, essential.
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What man of us has never felt, walking through the twilight or writing down a date from his past, that he has lost something infinite?
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It also occurred to him that throughout history, humankind has told two stories: the story of a lost ship sailing the Mediterranean seas in quest of a beloved isle, and the story of a god who allows himself to be crucified on Golgotha.
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On the floor, and hanging on to the bar, squatted an old man, immobile as an object. His years had reduced and polished him as water does a stone or the generations of men do a sentence.
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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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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.
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I might accept immortality, if I had to do it. But I would prefer - if there is any afterlife - to know nothing whatever about Borges, about his experiences in this world.
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I have known uncertainty: a state unknown to the Greeks.
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I gazed at every mirror on the planet, not one gave back my reflection.
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Any life, however long and complicated it may be, actually consists of a single moment — the moment when a man knows forever more who he is.
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The man who acquires an encyclopedia does not thereby acquire every line, every paragraph, every page, and every illustration he acquires the possibility of becoming familiar with one and another of those things.
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You who read me, are You sure of understanding my language?
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As the end approaches, there are no longer any images from memory - there are only words.
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We accept reality so readily - perhaps because we sense that nothing is real.
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I don't think I can really believe in doomsday I could hardly believe in rewards and punishments, in heaven or hell. As I wrote down in one of my sonnets - I seem to be always plagiarizing, imitating myself or somebody else for that matter - I think I am quite unworthy of heaven or of hell, and even of immortality.
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Reality is not always probable, or likely.
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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 an afterlife or not, whether I believe in God or not, I can only answer you that all things are possible. And if all things are possible, heaven and hell and the angels are also possible. They're not to be ruled out.
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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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I have no way of knowing whether the events that I am about to narrate are effects or causes.
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Heaven and hell seem out of proportion to me: the actions of men do not deserve so much.
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