… in art nothing is more secondary than the author’s intentions.

He thought that the rose was to be found in its own eternity and not in his words; and that we may mention or allude to a thing, but not express it.

Before unearthing this letter, I had questioned myself about the ways in which a book can be infinite. I could think of nothing other than a cyclic volume, a circular one. A book whose last...

If we think of the novel and the epic…The difference lies in the fact that the important thing about the epic is a hero–a man who is a pattern for all men. While, as Mencken...

We must not be too prodigal with our angels; they are the last divinities we harbor, and they might fly away.

It must be that I am not made to be a dead man, but these places and this discussion seem like a dream, and not a dream dreamed by me but by someone else still...

Sabemos que el pasado, el presente y el porvenir ya están, minucia por minucia, en la profética mente de Dios, en Su eternidad; lo extraño es que los hombres puedan mirar, indefinidamente, hacia atrás pero...

A writer always begins by being too complicated—he’s playing at several games at once.

I never reread what I’ve written. I’m far too afraid to feel ashamed of what I’ve done.

You have wakened not out of sleep, but into a prior dream, and that dream lies within another, and so on, to infinity, which is the number of grains of sand. The path that you...

We have a very precise image – an image at times shameless – of what we have lost, but we are ignorant of what may follow or replace it.

God, in the dream, illumined the animal’s brutishness and he understood the reasons, and accepted his destiny; but when he awoke there was only a dark resignation, a valiant ignorance, for the machinery of the...

Unappreciated because too many of his [Rudyard Kipling’s] peers were socialists.

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...

Tearing money is an impiety, like throwing away bread.

La amistad une; también el odio sabe juntar.

The image of the Lord has been replaced by a mirror.

The three of them knew it. She was Kafka’s mistress. Kafka had dreamt her. The three of them knew it. He was Kafka’s friend. Kafka had dreamt him. The three of them knew it. The...

And so, as I sleep, some dream beguiles me, and suddenly I know I dream.Then I think: this is a dream, a pure diversion of my will; now that I have unlimited power, I am...

EL AMENAZADOEs el amor. Tendré que ocultarme oque huir.Crecen los muros de su cárcel, comoen un sueño atroz. Lahermosa máscara ha cambiado, perocomo siempre es la única.,De qué me servirán mis talismanes:el ejercicio de las...

I think—the hero observes that nothing is so frightening as a labyrinth with no center.

Nothing is built on stone; All is built on sand, but we must build as if the sand were stone.

We are as ignorant of the meaning of the dragon as we are of the meaning of the universe.

The library will endure; it is the universe. As for us, everything has not been written; we are not turning into phantoms. We walk the corridors, searching the shelves and rearranging them, looking for lines...

I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.

How can we manage to illuminate the pathos of our lives?

… no se puede medir el tiempo por días, como el dinero por centavos o pesos, porque los pesos son iguales y cada día es distinto y tal vez cada hora.

To think is to ignore the differences, to generalize, to abstract.

There is a line in Verlaine I shall not recall again,There is a street close by forbidden to my feet,There’s a mirror that’s seen me for the very last time,There is a door that I...

The story of two dreams is a coincidence, a line drawn by chance, like the shapes of lions or horses that are sometimes formed by clouds.

Man’s memory shapesIts own Eden within

At the railroad station he noted that he still had thirty minutes. He quickly recalled that in a cafe on the Calle Brazil (a few dozen feet from Yrigoyen’s house) there was an enormous cat...

Paradise will be a kind of library

There are objects made up of two sense elements, one visual, the other auditory—the colour of a sunrise and the distant call of a bird. Other objects are made up of many elements—the sun, the...

They seek neither truth nor likelihood; they seek astonishment. They think metaphysics is a branch of the literature of fantasy

I have no way of knowing whether the events that I am about to narrate are effects or causes.

La duda es uno de los nombres de la inteligencia.

Many of the characters are fools and they’re always playing tricks on meand treating me badly.

Literature is not exhaustible, for the sufficient and simple reason that a single book is not.

I believe that in time we will have reached the point where we will deserve to be free of government.

All things left her, allBut one. Her highborn courtlinessAccompanied her to the end,Beyond the rapture and its eclipse,In a way like an angel’s. Of ElviraThe first thing that I saw – such years ago -Was...

Learning After some time, you learn the subtle difference betweenholding a handand imprisoning a soul;You learn that love does not equal sex,and that company does not equal security,and you start to learn….That kisses are not...

All theories are legitimate, no matter. What matters is what you do with them.

There are official searchers, inquisitors. I have seen them in the performance of their function: they always arrive extremely tired from their journeys; they speak of a broken stairway which almost killed them; they talk...

Od pierwszego Adama, który ujrzał noc,I dzień, i kształt swojej dłoni,Ludzie snuli opowieści i utrwalaliW kamieniu, w metalu czy na pergaminieTo wszystko, co zawiera ziemia czy co tworzy sen.Oto ich dzieło: Biblioteka.Powiadają, że liczba jej...

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...

Leaving behind the babble of the plaza, I enter the Library. I feel, almost physically, the gravitation of the books, the enveloping serenity of order, time magically dessicated and preserved.

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...

I believe the secret of the success of psychoanalysis resides in people’s vanity.

What a pity I can’t buy that book, for I already have a copy at home.