As Borges himself showed us in so many stories — “The Aleph”, “The Garden of Forking Paths”, “The Gift”, “Blue Tigers”, “Shakespeare’s Memory” — a blessing is always a mixed blessing.As Borges noted sadly, he...

We all live with the objective of being happy; our lives are all different and yet the same.

İçlerinde en serti ve en ciddisi hastabakıcı Olimpiada Vladislavovna idi, çünkü onun için hastaları dolaşmak bir Diyakos’un (*) dinsel töreni gibi bir şeydi.

Now and then there are readings that make the hairs on the neck, the non-existent pelt, stand on end and tremble, when every word burns and shines hard and clear and infinite and exact, like...

I don’t fear death–I fear dying before I’ve read Dickens end to end.

If you’re going to be a narcissistic schmuck, kid, don’t bother studying Faulkner. Go straight to Brett Easton Ellis. He’s the role model you need.

Nor is the limitation of what is sayable a limit to the doable: this last is the possibility of literature.

When the star dies, Its eye closes; tired of watching, It flies back to its first bright dream.

The world cannot be translated; It can only be dreamed of and touched.

Wherever I go, I run into myself.

Every star was once darker than the night, before it awoke.

To expect to be kissed having bad breath is the secret of a fool.

There is always the question why And there is always life, Which doesn’t need an answer.

Love is almost never simple.

This dwarf still observes the world from his own self-imposed height.

After Homer and Dante, is a whole century of creating worth one Shakespeare?

Literature has the ability to open up a whole new world to children, but we need to have a share in helping them to find that door and open it with them. Let’s set the...

What are we doing to each other? Because I know that I am doing to him exactly what he is doing to me. We are sometimes so happy, and never in our lives have we...

I once received a letter from an old lady in California who informed me that when the tired reader comes home at night, he wishes to read something that will lift up his heart. And...

The measure of a work of art is how much art it has in it, not how much ‘relevance’. Relevant to whom? Relevant to what? Nothing is more ephemeral than a hot topic.

The main danger is that of supposing that the thing to do is get a mind on the scale of Thomas (Aquinas)’s into your head, a task of compression that will be achieved only at...

The book was in her lap; she had read no further. The power to change one’s life comes from a paragraph, a lone remark. The lines that penetrate us are slender, like the flukes that...

After the birth of printing books became widespread. Hence everyone throughout Europe devoted himself to the study of literature… Every year, especially since 1563, the number of writings published in every field is greater than...

Literature suffers because writers give their books to colleagues who will then write glowing reviews or saccharine introductions.

Writers are not just writers, they are creators of worlds, sculptors of the mind, they are architects of language.

It began in mystery and it will end in mystery, but what a rare and beautiful country lies in between.

Take my books away, and I should be desperate!

The most advertised commodity is not always intrinsically the best; but is sometimes merely the product of a company, with plenty of money to spend on advertising.

To feel most beautifully alive means to be reading something beautiful, ready always to apprehend in the flow of language the sudden flash of poetry.

I must warn you that the books I like are not necessarily the ones I think are the best. I like them for various reasons not always easy to explain.

It hadn’t always been this way, that’s a cliché, but it is a cliché for a reason. It’s not like anyone starts a relationship with nothing to say to the other person. No-one wants to...

Bastam poucas palavras para escrever uma história e apenas uma pessoa para a ler.

A history of literature, unlike history as such, ought to list only victories, for its defeats are no victory for anyone.

I do not write with ease, nor am I ever pleased with anything I write. And so I rewrite.

To provoke dreams of terror in the slumber of prosperity has become the moral duty of literature.

It’s no wonder the narcissistic mother will always have a place in literature: she’s a freak of nature.

Had Stella been named anything else, and/or had we lived in any other city besides New Orleans, my desperate call would have been just my desperate call. In that alternate universe the neighbors might have...

The pursuit of truth, not of facts, is the business of fiction.

La calidad literaria es inversamente proporcional al número de lectores.

The only truth is that we cannot speak the truth . The only acceptable viewpoint is that we cannot express a viewpoint.

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...

Y así, del mismo modo que un amateur de las letras no debe cometar la imprudencia de embarcarse y tratar de cruzar el piélago literario, así una aficionada a las flores no tiene por qué...

The Booker thing was a catalyst for me in a bizarre way. It’s perceived as an accolade to be published as a ‘literary’ writer, but, actually, it’s pompous and it’s fake. Literary fiction is often...

Thus was born the Incunabula: it was forged by fire and persecution, to preserve and protect until the book might rise, Phoenix-like, from the ashes of demise.

How can you be kissing at a time like this? Have you no respect for the dead?

But the required survey of English literature troubled and disquieted him in a way nothing had ever done before.

Any connoisseur knows you’ve got to be drunk to really enjoy a good romance.

Hai Si Jebat, berpada-padalah engkau membunuh orang beribu-ribu ini, kerana engkau pun akan mati – Laksamana Hang Tuah.

La politique au milieu des intérêts d’imagination, c’est un coup de pistolet au milieu d’un concert.

The parrot had a range of phrases. His own name (‘Niko, Niko’), the name of his original owner and now ‘Stavros’. Occasionally he would also say ‘Panagia mou’, which could be an expression of piety...