“There is nothing in the world that is not mysterious, but the mystery is more evident in certain things than in others: in the sea, in the eyes of the elders, in the color yellow, and in music.”

The sea is an idiom I cannot decipher.

Everything touches everything.

My books standing there on the shelf do not know that I have written them.

Don’t talk unless you can improve the silence.

I might accept immortality, if I had to do it. But I would prefer – if there is any afterlife – to know nothing whatever about Borges, about his experiences in this world.

The minotaur more than justifies the existence of the labyrinth.

Whoever would undertake some atrocious enterprise should act as if it were already accomplished should impose upon himself a future as irrevocable as the past.

Perhaps the apparent favor of the universe is no more than the crocodile grin of a Doberman breathing hard and about to be hungry?

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

I have committed the worst of sins one can commit. I have not been happy.

Your unforgivable sins do not allow you to see my splendor.

It also occurred to him that throughout history, humankind has told two stories: the story of a lost ship sailing the Mediterranean seas in quest of a beloved isle, and the story of a god who allows himself to be crucified on Golgotha.

So plant your own gardens and decorate your own soul, instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers.

I gazed at every mirror on the planet, not one gave back my reflection.

Only in the present do things happen.

Doubt is one of the names of intelligence.

If you give yourself this gift of not knowing and you follow it, a vast spaciousness and mysterious openness dawns within you.

The press has always written that I am a recluse and a mysterious woman, but I am more down-to-earth than they think.

The universe lies before you on the floor, in the air, in the mysterious bodies of your dancers, in your mind.

I think our minds respond to things beyond this world. Take beauty: it’s a very mysterious thing, isn’t it?

Music works in mysterious ways. Once it goes in you have no idea what it can do to you.

Jesus is mysterious not just because of what we don’t know about him, but because of what we do know about him.

The urge to create a fictional narrative is a mysterious one, and when an idea comes, the writer’s sense of what a story wants to be is only vaguely visible through the penumbra of inspiration.

When a man is a mystery to himself you can hardly call him mysterious.