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

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The two important facts I should say, are emotion, and then words arising from emotion. I don't think you can write in an emotionless way. If you attempt it, the result is artificial. I don't like that kind of writing. I think that if a poem is really great, you should think of it as having written itself despite the author. It should flow.
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To be immortal is commonplace except for man, all creatures are immortal, for they are ignorant of death what is divine, terrible, incomprehensible, is to know that one is immortal.
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So plant your own gardens and decorate your own soul, instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers.
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Let others pride themselves about how many pages they have written I'd rather boast about the ones I've read.
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The task of art is to transform what is continuously happening to us, to transform all of these things into symbols, into music, into something which can last in man’s memory. That is our duty. If we don’t fulfill it, we feel unhappy.
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I can’t talk about my books. I have written them and tried to forget them. I have written once, and readers have read me many times, no? I try to think of what I wrote, it’s very unhealthy to think about the past, the case of elegies is very sad, as much as the case of complaints.
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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.
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To die for a religion is easier than to live it absolutely.
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What will die with me when I die, what pathetic or fragile form will the world lose?
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We are as ignorant of the meaning of the dragon as we are of the meaning of the universe.
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How can we manage to illuminate the pathos of our lives?
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It seemed incredible to me that day without premonitions or symbols should be the one of my inexorable death .
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Time is a fire that consumes me, but I am the fire.
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I think that the reader should enrich what he is reading. He should misunderstand the text he should change it into something else.
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Each thing implies the universe.
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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.
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I'm not interested in the fact that a writer may label himself as being intellectual or anti-intellectual. l'm really interested in the stuff he's turning out.
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i walk slowly, like one who comes from so far away he doesn't expect to arrive
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The web of time - the strands of which approach one another, bifurcate, intersect, or ignore each other through the centuries - embraces every possibility. We do not exist in most of them. In some you exist and not I, while in others I do, and you do not, and in yet others both of us exist.
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In general, every country has the language it deserves.
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