Quote

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.

Jorge Luis Borges

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Stories
Rhythm
Verses
Find
Patterns
Articles
Firsts
Looking
Pattern
First
Story
Regular
Writing
Free
Sentence
Going
Write
Poem
Kind
Makes
Hardly
Verse
Form
Sentences
Article

More quotes by Jorge Luis Borges

Image
The flattery of posterity is not worth much more than contemporary flattery, which is worth nothing.
Jorge Luis Borges
Image
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.
Jorge Luis Borges
Image
The word happiness exists in every language it is plausible the thing itself exists.
Jorge Luis Borges
Image
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.
Jorge Luis Borges
Image
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.
Jorge Luis Borges
Image
Everything touches everything.
Jorge Luis Borges
Image
It's a shame that we have to choose between two such second-rate countries as the USSR and the USA.
Jorge Luis Borges
Image
I believe books will never disappear. It is impossible for it to happen. Of all man's diverse tools, undoubtedly the most astounding are his books... If books were to disappear, history would disappear. So would man.
Jorge Luis Borges
Image
I am interested in the past. Perhaps one of the reasons is we cannot make, cannot change the past. I mean you can hardly unmake the present. But the past after all is merely to say a memory, a dream. You know my own past seems continually changed when I am remembering it, or reading things that are interesting to me.
Jorge Luis Borges
Image
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.
Jorge Luis Borges
Image
I suppose every poet has his own private mythology. Maybe he's unaware of it. People tell me that I have evolved a private mythology of tigers, of blades, of labyrinths, and Im unaware of the fact this is so. My readers are finding it all the time. But I think perhaps that is the duty of poet.
Jorge Luis Borges
Image
What I'm really concerned about is reaching one person. And that person may be myself for all I know.
Jorge Luis Borges
Image
Reality favors symmetry.
Jorge Luis Borges
Image
A . . . poet is a discoverer rather than an inventor.
Jorge Luis Borges
Image
I cannot walk through the suburbs in the solitude of the night without thinking that the night pleases us because it suppresses idle details, just as our memory does.
Jorge Luis Borges
Image
Kafka had the sense of guilt. I don't think I have because I don't believe in free will. Because what I have done has been done, well, for me or through me. But I haven't done it really. But I don't believe in free will, I can't feel guilty.
Jorge Luis Borges
Image
Time broadens the scope of verses and I know of some which, like music, are everything for all men.
Jorge Luis Borges
Image
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.
Jorge Luis Borges
Image
Time is a fire that consumes me, but I am the fire.
Jorge Luis Borges
Image
It seemed incredible to me that day without premonitions or symbols should be the one of my inexorable death .
Jorge Luis Borges