Quotes by Jorge Luiz Borges

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All that pertains to life, including humiliations, failures, misfortunes, have all been given to the artist as a clay, a material for his art; and he must take advantage... This is why I spoke, in one of my poems, about the ancient food of heroes: humiliation, unhappiness, discord. These were given to us for us to transfigure, so that, out of the miserable circumstances of our lives, we might build eternity or the thing that aspires to eternity.

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Poetry is no less mysterious than other elements of the universe. Even a happy verse has no way of filling us with pride, for it is nothing but a gift of Hazard or of the Spirit; only the errors belong to us.

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At the beginning of literature is myth, and so at its end.

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The emotions which literature arouses may indeed be eternal, but the means employed will have to vary constantly, even to a minute extent, in order not to lose their own virtues. For they begin to wear out as the lecturer recognizes them...Hence the danger of asserting that there are classical works, and that they will always be classical.

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A poet's glory depends, after all, on the interest or indifference of generations of anonymous people who put it to the test, in the solitude of libraries...

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For a true poet, every moment of life, every fact should be intensely poetic, since, deep down, this is the truth.

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The poet of our times cannot turn his back on his age.

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A book necessarily endowed with certain merits is not classic; classic is, however, the book that generations of people, driven by different reasons, read with an anticipated fervor and with a mysterious propriety...

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The book is not individuality without communication; it's a relationship, an axis of immunerable relationships. A literature differs from another, later or earlier, not so much by the text as by the way in which it is read.

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Every writer creates his forerunners. His approach transforms our conception of the past, just as it transforms the future. In this correlation, the identity or plurality of people has no meaning.

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Those who claim that art should not propagate doctrines are usually referring to those enemies of their own doctrines.

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If literature were only a verbal algebra, anyone could produce a book, still trying variations.

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To forget is to forgive.