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I cannot sleep unless I am surrounded by books.

Jorge Luis Borges

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

Existence Fact Poetry Possible Word
To say good-bye is to deny separation; it is to say Today we play at going our own ways, but we’ll see each other tomorrow. Men invented farewells because they somehow knew themselves to be immortal, even while seeing themselves as contingent and ephemeral.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Immortal Invention Known Man Play Separate Way
Do you want to see what human eyes have never seen? Look at the moon. Do you want to hear what ears have never heard? Listen to the bird’s cry. Do you want to touch what hands have never touched? Touch the earth. Verily I say that God is about to create the world.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Creation Eyes Human Listening World
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 I have visited.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Existence Love Myself Reading Travel Visit Woman Writing
A writer – and, I believe, generally all persons – must think that whatever happens to him or her is a resource.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Believe Myself Resource Writing
Man’s memory shapes Its own Eden within.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Man Memories Shape
The earth we inhabit is an error, an incompetent parody. Mirrors and paternity are abominable because they multiply and affirm it.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Affirmation Earth Errors Mistake
We are our memory, we are that chimerical museum of shifting shapes, that pile of broken mirrors.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Memories Mirror Museum Shape
Many of the characters are fools and they’re always playing tricks on me and treating me badly.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Character Fools Myself Play Trick
Personally, I am a hedonistic reader; I have never read a book merely because it was ancient. I read books for the aesthetic emotions they offer me, and I ignore the commentaries and criticism.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Aesthetic Criticism Personal Reading
In Spanish it is very difficult to make things flow, because words are over-long. But in English, you have light words.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Difficult Light Spanish Word Yourself
If I were asked to name the chief event in my life, I should say my father’s library.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Father Library Life Name
May Heaven exist, even if my place is Hell.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Existence Heaven Hell Place
Films are even stranger, for what we are seeing are not disguised people but photographs of disguised people, and yet we believe them while the film is being shown.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Believe Disguise Movie People Photograph Stranger
Reality favors symmetry.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Reality Symmetry
I foresee that man will resign himself each day to new abominations, and soon that only bandits and soldiers will be left.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Man Myself See Soldier
Reality is not always probable, or likely.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Probability Reality
I am not sure of anything, I know nothing. Can you imagine that I don’t even know the date of my own death?
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Date Death Imagination Known Yourself
I think most people are more important than their opinions.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Important Opinion People Thinking
You can’t measure time by days, the way you measure money by dollars and cents, because dollars are all the same while every day is different and maybe every hour as well.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Day Different Measurement Money Time
The minotaur more than justifies the existence of the labyrinth.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

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

Breathe Hungry Universe
Time, which despoils castles, enriches verses.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Literature Patience Power Time
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.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Book Disappear Diversity History Man Myself
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.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Acceptance Experience Immortal World
The word happiness exists in every language; it is plausible the thing itself exists.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Existence Happiness Word
The visible universe was an illusion or, more precisely, a sophism. Mirrors and fatherhood are abominable because they multiply it and extend it.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Father Mirror Universe Visible

I cannot sleep unless I am surrounded by books.

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I cannot sleep unless I am surrounded by books.

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