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We have a very precise image – an image at times shameless – of what we have lost, but we are ignorant of what may follow or replace it.

Jorge Luis Borges

What will die with me when I die, what pathetic or fragile form will the world lose?
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Death Form Fragile Lose World
I do not write for a select minority, which means nothing to me, nor for that adulated platonic entity known as ‘The Masses’. Both abstractions, so dear to the demagogue, I disbelieve in. I write for myself and for my friends, and I write to ease the passing of time.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Ease Friendship Minority Myself Time Writing
The task of art is to transform what is continuously happening to us, to transform all of these things into symbols, into music, into something which can last in man’s memory. That is our duty. If we don’t fulfill it, we feel unhappy.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Art Happiness Man Memories Music Transformation
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
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.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Art Embarrassment Fortune Improvement Ourselves
A writer’s work is the product of laziness.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Lazy Poet Work Writing
Reality is partial to symmetry and slight anachronisms
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Partial Reality Symmetry
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.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Allow Himself History Human Sea
Death is just infinity closing in.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Close Death Infinite
I saw a sunset in Queretaro that seemed to reflect the color of a rose in Bengal.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Color Reflection Rose
I cannot walk through the suburbs in the solitude of the night without thinking that the night pleases us because it suppresses idle details, just as our memory does.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Detail Memories Myself Night Solitude Thinking Walk
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
Reality may avoid the obligation to be interesting, but hypotheses may not.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Avoid Interest Obligation Reality
The dictionary is based on the hypothesis — obviously an unproven one — that languages are made up of equivalent synonyms.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Dictionary Language Symptoms
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.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Feeling Listening Myself Order Writing
The future is as irrevocable as an inflexible yesterday.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Future Past

We have a very precise image – an image at times shameless – of what we have lost, but we are ignorant of what may follow or replace it.

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We have a very precise image – an image at times shameless – of what we have lost, but we are ignorant of what may follow or replace it.

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Popular Authors

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