“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.”

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.

Time, which despoils castles, enriches verses.

Each thing implies the universe.

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.

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

Israelites, Christians and Muslims profess immortality, but the veneration they render this world proves they believe only in it, since they destine all other worlds, in infinite number, to be its reward or punishment.

Soccer is popular because stupidity is popular.

Happy are the beloved and the lovers and those who can live without love.

Another school declares that all time has already transpired and that our life is only the crepuscular and no doubt falsified and mutilated memory or reflection of an irrecoverable process.

He consorted with prostitutes and poets and with persons even worse.

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

No one is a poet from eight to twelve and from two to six. Whoever is a poet is one always, and continually assaulted by poetry.