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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.

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
Tell
Quandary
Writing
Intruder
Really
Prose
Attempt
Poetry
Writer
Friends
Write

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Reality is partial to symmetry and slight anachronisms
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I am almost sure to be blotted out by death, but sometimes I think it is not impossible that I may continue to live in some other manner after my physical death . Or, as Hamlet wonders, what dreams will come when we leave this body?
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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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What I'm really concerned about is reaching one person. And that person may be myself for all I know.
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In vain have oceans been squandered on you, in vain the sun, wonderfully seen through Whitman’s eyes. You have used up the years and they have used up you, and still, and still, you have not written the poem.
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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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If a writer disbelieves what he is writing, then he can hardly expect his reader to believe it.
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The thought came over me that never would one full and absolute moment, containing all the others, justify my life, that all of my instants would be provisional phases, annihilators of the past turned to face the future, and that beyond the episodic, the present, the circumstantial, we were nobody.
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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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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.
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In general, every country has the language it deserves.
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All literature, is, finally autobiographical.
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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.
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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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The mightiest love was granted him Love that does not expect to be loved.
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I...have always known that my destiny was, above all, a literary destiny — that bad things and some good things would happen to me, but that, in the long run, all of it would be converted into words. Particularly the bad things, since happiness does not need to be transformed: happiness is its own end.
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Reality may avoid the obligation to be interesting, but ... hypotheses may not.
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The time for your labor has been granted.
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The dictionary is based on the hypothesis -- obviously an unproven one -- that languages are made up of equivalent synonyms.
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As the end approaches, there are no longer any images from memory - there are only words.
Jorge Luis Borges