Jorge Luis Borges
Master of metaphysical fiction and labyrinths
Most quoted
"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 must feel this more intensely. All that happens to us, including our humiliations, our misfortunes, our embarrassments, all is given to us as raw material, as clay, so that we may shape our art."
— from Interview with Richard Burgin, 1967
"A man sets out to draw the world. As the years go by, he peoples a space with images of provinces, kingdoms, mountains, bays, ships, islands, fishes, rooms, instruments, stars, horses, and individuals. A short time before he dies, he discovers that the patient labyrinth of lines traces the lineaments of his own face."
— from Epilogue to 'The Maker', 1960
"I foresee that man will resign himself each day to more atrocious undertakings; soon there will be no one but warriors and brigands; I give them this counsel: The author of an atrocious undertaking ought to imagine that he has already accomplished it, ought to impose upon himself a future as irrevocable as the past."
— from The Garden of Forking Paths, 1944
All quotes by Jorge Luis Borges (325)
I am a man who has always been a student.
The world is a song, and we are all notes in it.
I am a man who has always been a lover of beauty.
The world is a dance, and we are all dancers in it.
I am a man who has always been a believer in magic.
The world is a mystery, and we are all trying to solve it.
I am a man who has always been a rebel.
The world is a game, and we are all players in it.
I am a man who has always been a paradox.
The world is a mirror, and we are all reflections in it.
I am a man who has always been a contradiction.
The world is a stage, and we are all actors on it.
I am a man who has always been a question mark.
The world is a riddle, and we are all trying to guess the answer.
Don't talk to me about the real world. I'm a writer.
I am not sure that I exist, actually. I am all the writers that I have read, all the people that I have met, all the women that I have loved; all the cities that I have visited, all the ancestors that I have had.
There is no need to build a labyrinth when the entire universe is one.
Reading is an activity subsequent to writing.
I don't know whether I am a man or a dream.
Every man is a poet when he is in love.
Contemporaries of Jorge Luis Borges
Other Literatures born within 50 years of Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986).