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Writing long books is a laborious and impoverishing act of foolishness: expanding in five hundred pages an idea that could be perfectly explained in a few minutes. A better procedure is to pretend that those books already exist and to offer a summary, a commentary.

Jorge Luis Borges

I walk slowly, like one who comes from so far away he doesn’t expect to arrive.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Arrival Expectation Far Slow Walk
Let others pride themselves about how many pages they have written; I’d rather boast about the ones I’ve read.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Oneself Page Pride Reading Writing
He thought that the rose was to be found in its own eternity and not in his words; and that we may mention or allude to a thing, but not express it.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Expression Finding Mention Rose Word
When you reach my age, you realize you couldn’t have done things very much better or much worse than you did them in the first place.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Age Better Place Reach Worst Yourself
When I write, I do it urged by an intimate necessity. I don’t have in mind an exclusive public, or a public of multitudes, I don’t think in either thing. I think about expressing what I want to say. I try to do it in the simplest way possible.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Expression Intimate Myself Necessary Possible Simplicity Writing
My undertaking is not difficult, essentially. I should only have to be immortal to carry it out.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Carry Difficult Essential Immortal Myself
I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Imagination Kind Library Myself Paradise
Happy are the beloved and the lovers and those who can live without love.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Happiness Live Love Lover
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.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Country Enemy Garden Man Moments Nature Stream
I think most people are more important than their opinions.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Important Opinion People Thinking
I saw all the mirrors on earth and none of them reflected me.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Earth Mirror Myself Reflection See
In all fiction, when a man is faced with alternatives he chooses one at the expense of others.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Choice Expense Face Fiction Man
The Falklands thing was a fight between two bald men over a comb.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Fiction Fight Funny Literature Story
He was very religious; he believed that he had a secret pact with God which exempted him from doing good in exchange for prayers and piety.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Goodness Prayer Religious Secret
I never reread what I’ve written. I’m far too afraid to feel ashamed of what I’ve done.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Afraid Feeling Myself Reading Shame Writing
I saw a sunset in Queretaro that seemed to reflect the color of a rose in Bengal.
JORGE LUIS BORGES

Color Reflection Rose

Writing long books is a laborious and impoverishing act of foolishness: expanding in five hundred pages an idea that could be perfectly explained in a few minutes. A better procedure is to pretend that those books already exist and to offer a summary, a commentary.

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Writing long books is a laborious and impoverishing act of foolishness: expanding in five hundred pages an idea that could be perfectly explained in a few minutes. A better procedure is to pretend that those books already exist and to offer a summary, a commentary.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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