Jorge Luis Borges

"I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library."

"The universe (which others call the Library) is composed of an indefinite and perhaps infinite number of hexagonal galleries."

"Writing long books is a laborious madness."

"Any life is made up of a single moment - the moment in which a man finds out, once and for all, who he is."

"Oblivion is the only paradise I cannot imagine."

"I have committed the worst sin of all that can be committed - I have been bored."

"To be immortal is commonplace; except for man, all creatures are immortal, for they are ignorant of death."

"I owe a debt to Israel of the Bible for its grandeur."

"You will ask: what is the benefit of reading the classics? The answer is simple: only the classics teach us to read."

"The fundamental principle of intellectual life is not the belief but the doubt."

"Memory is working all the time in us, though we do not realize it."

"The taste of the apple lies in the contact of the fruit with the palate."

"An intellectual is a man who uses words to describe reality."

"I am not sure I exist, actually. I am all the writers that I have read, all the people that I have met, all the women I have loved; all the cities I have visited."

"Myth is the secret opening through which the inexhaustible energies of the cosmos pour into human cultural manifestation."

"Every writer creates his own precursors."

"To fall in love is to create a religion that has a fallible god."

"The moment one learns English, complications set in."

"I have always felt that the night-time is more real than the day."

"Hell is other people."

"The past is only a visible reminder of what we have forgotten."

"Destiny is the only thing that helps us to accept reality."

"An intellectual is a man who has discovered something more interesting than women."

"God is in one of the leaves of the tree."

"Fiction and reality are simply words; the truth is that reality is already fiction."

"The catalogue of forms is endless until some Plato can classify them."

"Anyone who plays chess knows it is a contest between two kings but only one is the real king."

"We are no one. I would like to be someone in your eyes."

"I declare the night to be the only refuge."

"What, after all, is reading if not a kind of translation?"