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

A book is more than a verbal structure or series of verbal structures; it is the dialogue it establishes with its reader and the intonation it imposes upon his voice and the changing and durable...

We are ignorant of the meaning of the dragon in the same way that we are ignorant of the meaning of the universe; but there is something in the dragon’s image that fits man’s imagination,...

He [Omar Khayyam] is an atheist, but knows how to interpret in orthodox style the most difficult passages of the Koran; for every educated man is a theologian and faith is not a requisite.

When writers die they become books, which is, after all, not too bad an incarnation.”[As attributed by Alastair Reid in Neruda and Borges, The New Yorker, June 24, 1996; as well as in The Talk...

Another school declares that all time has already transpired and that our life is only the crepuscular and no doubt falsified and mutilated memory or reflection of an irrecoverable process.

The Library is a sphere whose exact centre is any one of its hexagons and whose circumference is inaccessible.

It is generally understood that a modern-day book may honorably be based upon an older one, especially since, as Dr. Johnson observed, no man likes owing anything to his contemporaries. The repeated but irrelevant points...

He was very religious; he believed that he had a secret pact with God which exempted him from doing good in exchange for prayers and piety.

Bana aynı anda hem 800,000 kitabı hem de karanlığı veren Tanrı’nın muhteşem ironisi

Heaven and hell seem out of proportion to me: the actions of men do not deserve so much.

Art is fire plus algebra.

Personally, I am a hedonistic reader; I have never read a book merely because it was ancient. I read books for the aesthetic emotions they offer me, and I ignore the commentaries and criticism.

Como todos los hombres de la Biblioteca, he viajado en mi juventud; he peregrinado en busca de un libro, acaso del catálogo de catálogos; ahora que mis ojos casi no pueden descifrar lo que escribo,...

–,all our lives we postpone everything that can be postponed; perhaps we all have the certainty, deep inside, that we are immortal and sooner or later every man will do everything, know all there is...

Emma dropped the paper. Her first impression was of a weak feeling in her stomach and in her knees; then of blind guilt, of unreality, of coldness, of fear; then she wished that it were...

I suspected once that any human life, however intricate and full it might be, consisted in reality of one moment: the moment when a man knows for all time who he is.

He intentado, no se con que fortuna, la redacción de cuentos directos. No me atrevo a afirmar que son sencillos; no hay en la tierra, una sola página, una sola palabra, que lo sea, ya...

tout aboutit en un livre,” everything ends up in a book. The Greeks speak of generations that will sing; Mallarmé speaks of an object, of a thing among things, a book. But the idea is...

I prayed aloud, less to plead for divine favor than to intimidate the tribe with articulate speech.

Por lo demás, la literatura no es otra cosa que un sueño dirigido.

Dormir, según se sabe, es el mas secreto de nuestros actos. Le dedicamos una tercera parte de nuestra vida y no lo comprendemos. Para algunos no es otra cosa que el eclipse de nuestra vigilia;...

Danten kommentaattori Tomaso Casini muistuttaa tässä yhteydessä toscanalaisesta legendasta, jonka mukaan Herra rankaisi Kainia vangitsemalla tämän kuuhun ja määräten tämän kantamaan piikkistä risukimppua aina päivien loppuun saakka.

Of all man’s instruments, the most wondrous, no doubt, is the book. The other instruments are extensions of his body. The microscope, the telescope, are extensions of his sight; the telephone is the extension of...

One day or one night—between my days and nights, what difference can there be?—I dreamed that there was a grain of sand on the floor of my cell. Unconcerned, I went back to sleep; I...

Little did they suspect that the years would end by wearing away the disharmony.Little did they suspect that La Mancha and Montiel and the knight’s frail figure would be, for the future, no less poetic...

Puis il réfléchit: la réalité ne coïncide habituellement pas avec les prévisions; avec une logique perverse, il en déduisit que prévoir un détail circonstanciel, c’est empêcher que celui-ci se réalise. Fidèle à cette faible magie,...

En av lärorna på Tlön går så långt att den förnekar tiden: den tänker sig att nuet är oändligt, att framtiden inte är verklig annat än som en förväntan i nuet, att det förflutna inte...

Ogni linguaggio è un alfabeto di simboli il cui uso presuppone un passato che gli interlocutori condividono; come trasmettere agli altri l’infinito Aleph, che la mia timorosa memoria a stento abbraccia?

Ferrari: How odd, Borges, it seems that we are talking constantly through memory. Sometimes, our conversations remind me of a dialogue between two memories.Borges: In fact, that’s what it is. If we are something, we...

The metaphysicians of Tlön are not looking for truth, nor even for an approximation of it; they are after a kind of amazement.

There are those who seek the love of a woman to forget her, to not think about her.

All men who repeat a line from Shakespeare are William Shakespeare

Reading . . . is an activity subsequent to writing: more resigned, more civil, more intellectual.

From the twilight of day till the twilight of evening, a leopard, in the last years of the thirteenth century, would see some wooden planks, some vertical iron bars, men and women who changed, a...

Novels include padding; I think padding may be an essential part of the novel, for all I know.

We spend our lives waiting for our book and it never comes.

Russel /…/ antar att planeten har blivit skapad för några minuter sedan, >utrustad< med en mänsklighet som >minns< ett illusoriskt förflutet.

…vidi i resti atroci di quanto deliziosamente era stata Beatriz Viterbo, vidi la circolazione del mio oscuro sangue, vidi il meccanismo dell’amore e la modificazione della morte, vidi l’Aleph, da tutti i punti, vidi nell’Aleph...

From my weakness, I drew strength that never left me.

I reread these negative remarks and realize that I do not know whether music can despair of music or marble of marble. I do know that literature is an art that can foresee the time...

One of the schools of Tlön goes so far as to negate time; it reasons that the present is indefinite, that the future has no reality other than as a present hope, that the past...

The SuicideNot a single star will be left in the night.The night will not be left.I will die and, with me,the weight of the intolerable universe.I shall erase the pyramids, the medallions,the continents and faces.I...

. . . In that Empire, the Art of Cartography attained such Perfection that the map of a single Province occupied the entirety of a City, and the map of the Empire, the entirety of...

Being with you and not being with you is the only way I have to measure time.

Yo, que me figuraba el Paraíso bajo la especie de una biblioteca.

Blind to all fault, destiny can be ruthless at one’s slightest distraction.

It’s a shame that we have to choose between two such second-rate countries as the USSR and the USA.

A writer – and, I believe, generally all persons – must think that whatever happens to him or her is a resource. All things have been given to us for a purpose, and an artist...

The truth is that we all live by leaving behind; no doubt we all profoundly know that we are immortal and that sooner or later every man will do all things and know everything.