153 quotes
In that Empire, the Art of Cartography attained such Perfection that the map of a single Province occupied the entirety of a City, and the map of the Empire, the entirety of a Province.
In life, he suffered from a sense of unreality, as do many Englishmen.
Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius (1940)
Films are even stranger, for what we are seeing are not disguised people but photographs of disguised people, and yet we believe them while the film is being shown.
Villari took no notice of them because the idea of a coincidence between art and reality was alien to him. Unlike people who read novels, he never saw himself as a character in a work of art.
I have committed the worst sin of all
That a man can commit.
I have not been Happy.
The man who acquires an encyclopedia does not thereby acquire every line, every paragraph, every page, and every illustration; he acquires the possibility of becoming familiar with one and another of those things.
Shakespeare's Memory (1983)
Thus fought the heroes, tranquil their admirable hearts, violent their swords, resigned to kill and to die.
The Garden of Forking Paths (1942)
In a riddle whose answer is chess, what is the only prohibited word?
The Garden of Forking Paths (1942)
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.
If the pages of this book contain some successful verse, the reader must excuse me the discourtesy of having usurped it first. Our nothingness differs little; it is a trivial and chance circumstance that you should be the reader of these exercises and I their author.
He transforms all concepts into incommunicable, solidified objects. To refute him is to become contaminated with unreality.
Discussion (1932)
Hume noted for all time that Berkeley's arguments did not admit the slightest refutation nor did they cause the slightest conviction.
Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius (1940)
I am not sure that I exist, actually. I am all the writers that I have read, all the people that I have met, all the women that I have loved; all the cities that I have visited, all my ancestors.
There are no moral or intellectual merits. Homer composed the Odyssey; if we postulate an infinite period of time, with infinite circumstances and changes, the impossible thing is not to compose the Odyssey, at least once.
The Immortal (1949)
On the floor, and hanging on to the bar, squatted an old man, immobile as an object. His years had reduced and polished him as water does a stone or the generations of men do a sentence. He was dark, dried up, diminutive, and seemed outside time, situated in eternity.
Ficciones (1944)
We can suspect that there is no universe in the organic, unifying sense, that this ambitious term has. If there is a universe, its aim is not conjectured yet; we have not yet conjectured the words, the definitions, the etymologies, the synonyms, from the secret dictionary of God.
A writer — and, I believe, generally all persons — must think that whatever happens to him or her is a resource. All things have been given to us for a purpose, and an artist must feel this more intensely. 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.
It seemed incredible to me that day without premonitions or symbols should be the one of my inexorable death.
The Garden of Forking Paths (1942)
How else can one threaten, other than with death? The interesting, the original thing, would be to threaten someone with immortality.
That history should have imitated history was already sufficiently marvellous; that history should imitate literature is inconceivable....
Ficciones (1944)