Jorge Luis Borges

"I have always believed that the most profound truths are hidden in paradox."

"Writing is the art of discovering what you think about something."

"Every man is both the dreamer and the dream."

"I would rather live in a world of infinite possibility than certain knowledge."

"The beauty of language is that it allows us to transcend ourselves."

"I believe that love is the only force capable of redeeming human existence."

"To understand one's place in the universe is to accept one's insignificance."

"A book is a dream that you hold in your hand."

"I have learned that the greatest courage is the courage to be yourself."

"Memory is both our salvation and our curse."

"The act of writing transforms both the writer and the reader."

"I believe that solitude is the price of any true intellectual achievement."

"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 is nothing more than a guided dream."

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

"One thing does not exclude another. The pen is not inferior to the plough."

"I owe everything to my predecessors and to the masters of literature."

"The past is what you remember, imagine you remember, convince yourself that you remember."

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

"Memory is not an instrument for exploring the past but rather a medium. It is the past itself."

"Ignorance is bliss, but knowledge is power—choose your own burden."

"A writer who does not believe in the freedom of language is like a musician who does not believe in sound."

"To be immortal, one must be worthy of death."

"The Argentine does not argue; he contradicts."

"Every writer creates his own precursors."

"I am, in fact, a skeptic who is not sure of his skepticism."

"In youth we learn; in age we understand."

"The practice of literature is the practice of freedom."

"I have always thought of nightmares as a special class of literature."