“Thus my life is a flight and I lose everything and everything belongs to oblivion, or to him.”

I believe books will never disappear. It is impossible for it to happen. Of all man’s diverse tools, undoubtedly the most astounding are his books… If books were to disappear, history would disappear. So would man.

I thought that a man can be an enemy of other men, of the moments of other men, but not of a country: not of fireflies, words, gardens, streams of water, sunsets.

The truth is that we live out our lives putting off all that can be put off; perhaps we all know deep down that we are immortal and that sooner or later all men will do and know all things.

When I feel I’m going to write something, then I just am quiet and I try to listen. Then something comes through. And I do what I can in order not to tamper with it.

The central fact of my life has been the existence of words and the possibility of weaving those words into poetry.

You have wakened not out of sleep, but into a prior dream, and that dream lies within another, and so on, to infinity, which is the number of grains of sand. The path that you are to take is endless, and you will die before you have truly awakened.

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.

Chance fights ever on the side of the prudent.

Nowadays you can go anywhere in the world in a few hours, and nothing is fabulous any more.

It’s not the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the dog.

Victory is always possible for the person who refuses to stop fighting.

Once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return.

The soul takes flight to the world that is invisible but there arriving she is sure of bliss and forever dwells in paradise.

Yeah, I wasn’t chosen to be first. I was just chosen to command that flight. Circumstance put me in that particular role. That wasn’t planned by anyone.

Let us step into the night and pursue that flighty temptress, adventure.