Jorge Luis Borges

Literature is not exhaustible, for the sufficient and simple reason that a single book is not.

You who read me, are You sure of understanding my language?

What man of us has never felt, walking through the twilight or writing down a date from his past, that he has lost something infinite?

Being with you and not being with you is the only way I have to measure time.

We did meet forty years ago. At that time we were both influenced by Whitman and I said, jokingly in part, 'I don't think anything can be done in Spanish, do you?' Neruda agreed, but we decided it was too late for us to write our verse in English. We'd have to make the best of a second-rate literature.

Personally, I am a hedonistic reader; I have never read a book merely because it was ancient. I read books for the aesthetic emotions they offer me, and I ignore the commentaries and criticism.

When you reach my age, you realize you couldn't have done things very much better or much worse than you did them in the first place.

Truly fine poetry must be read aloud. A good poem does not allow itself to be read in a low voice or silently. If we can read it silently, it is not a valid poem: a poem demands pronunciation. Poetry always remembers that it was an oral art before it was a written art. It remembers that it was first song.

Whoever would undertake some atrocious enterprise should act as if it were already accomplished should impose upon himself a future as irrevocable as the past.

Besides, rereading, not reading, is what counts.