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.

En mi época no había Best-Sellers y no podíamos prostituírnos. No había quien comprara nuestra prostitución.

Cervantes’ text and Menard’s are verbally identical; but the second is almost infinitely richer.

In Sumatra, someone wishes to receive a doctorate in prophecy. The master seer who administers his exam asks if he will fail or pass. the candidate replies that he will fail. … One can already...

Let others pride themselves about how many pages they have written; I’d rather boast about the ones I’ve read.

If you sell, say, two thousand copies, it is the same thing as if you had sold nothing at all because two thousand is too vast—I mean, for the imagination to grasp. While thirty-seven people—perhaps...

Akheronin sisuksissa on kyyneliä, hammasten kiristystä, utua, tulta, sietämätöntä poltetta, jäätävää kylmyyttä, koiria, karhuja, leijonia ja käärmeitä. Tässä legendassa helvetti on eläin, jonka sisällä on muita eläimiä.

Let not the rash marble riskgarrulous breaches of oblivion’s omnipotence,in many words recallingname, renown, events, birthplace.All those glass jewels are best left in the dark.Let not the marble say what men do not.The essentials of...

Reality is not always probable, or likely.

The universe (which others call the Library) is composed of an indefinite, perhaps infinite number of hexagonal galleries.

Hay quienes no pueden imaginar un mundo sin pájaros; hay quienes no pueden imaginar un mundo sin agua; en lo que a mi se refiere, soy incapaz de imaginar un mundo sin libros.

Boast of QuietnessWritings of light assault the darkness, more prodigious than meteors.The tall unknowable city takes over the countryside.Sure of my life and death, I observe the ambitious and would like tounderstand them.Their day is...

So witless did these ideas strike me as being, so sweeping and pompous the way they were expressed, that I associated them immediately with literature.

So my life is a point-counterpoint, a kind of fugue, and a falling away–and everything winds up being lost to me, and everything falls into oblivion, or into the hands of the other man.

When a writer dies, he becomes his books.