You can't measure time by days, the way you measure money by dollars and cents, because dollars are all the same while every day is different and maybe every hour as well.
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote emphasizes that all experiences, good or bad, serve as valuable resources for creativity and artistic expression.
Jorge Luis Borges suggests that every experience in life, including hardships and embarrassments, contributes to an artist's ability to create. By viewing these challenges as raw material, artists can shape their work and draw inspiration from their lived experiences, ultimately transforming pain into creativity. This perspective encourages individuals to embrace all parts of their journey as essential to their artistic endeavors.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be shared in a creative writing workshop to encourage participants to draw upon their life experiences.
More from Jorge Luis Borges
All quotes βTo say good-bye is to deny separation; it is to say Today we play at going our own ways, but we'll see each other tomorrow. Men invented farewells because they somehow knew themselves to be immortal, even while seeing themselves as contingent and ephemeral.
The execution was set for the 29th of March, at nine in the morning. This delay was due to a desire on the part of the authorities to act slowly and impersonally, in the manner of planets or vegetables.
This felicitous supposition declared that there is only one Individual, and that this indivisible Individual is every one of the separate beings in the universe, and that these beings are the instruments and masks of divinity itself.
A man sets out to draw the world. As the years go by, he peoples a space with images of provinces, kingdoms, mountains, bays, ships, islands, fishes, rooms, instruments, stars, horses, and individuals. A short time before he dies, he discovers that the patient labyrinth of lines traces the lineaments of his own face.
Let neither tear nor reproach besmirch this declaration of the mastery of God who, with magnificent irony, granted me both the gift of books and the night.
Similar quotes
I feel like everything you learn as an actor growing up is wrong. You're supposed to hit your mark, find your light and know your lines. Those are all things that just make things wooden, dull and boring.
Those with prodigious skill in music are better suited for all things.
The poet makes silk dresses out of worms.
What an artist is for is to tell us what we see but do not know that we see.
A sight to dream of, not to tell!
I will tell you what Jeanne was like. She was like a piano in a country where everyone has had their hands cut off.