Every novel is an ideal plane inserted into the realm of reality.

— Jorge Luis Borges

Ferrari: How odd, Borges, it seems that we are talking constantly through memory. Sometimes, our conversations remind me of a dialogue between two memories. Borges: In fact, that’s what it is. If we are something, we are our past, aren’t we? Our past is not what can be recorded in a biography or in the newspapers. Our past is our memory. That memory can be hidden or inaccurate—it doesn’t matter. It’s there, isn’t it? It can be a lie, but that lie becomes part of our memory, part of us. (Conversations, Vol. 1)

— Jorge Luis Borges

From my weakness, I drew strength that never left me.

— Jorge Luis Borges

From the twilight of day till the twilight of evening, a leopard, in the last years of the thirteenth century, would see some wooden planks, some vertical iron bars, men and women who changed, a wall and perhaps a stone gutter filled with dry leaves. He did not know, could not know, that he longed for love and cruelty and the hot pleasure of tearing things to pieces and the wind carrying the scent of a deer, but something suffocated and rebelled within him and God spoke to him in a dream: "You live and will die in this prison so that a man I know of may see you a certain number of times and not forget you and place your figure and symbol in a poem which has its precise place in the scheme of the universe. You suffer captivity, but you will have given a word to the poem." God, in the dream, illumined the animal's brutishness and the animal understood these reasons and accepted his destiny, but, when he awoke, there was in him only an obscure resignation, a valorous ignorance, for the machinery of the world is much too complex for the simplicity of a beast.

— Jorge Luis Borges

God, in the dream, illumined the animal's brutishness, and he understood the reasons, and accepted his destiny; but when he awoke there was only a dark resignation, a valiant ignorance, for the machinery of the world is far too complex for the simplicity of a wild beast. Years later, Dante was dying in Ravenna, as unjustified and as lonely as any other man. In a dream, God declared to him the secret purpose of his life and work; Dante, in wonderment, knew at last who and what he was and blessed the bitterness of his life....upon waking, he felt that he had received and lost an infinite thing, something that he would not be able to recuperate or even glimpse, for the machinery of the world is much too complex for the simplicity of a man.

— Jorge Luis Borges

Heaven and hell seem out of proportion to me: the actions of men do not deserve so much.

— Jorge Luis Borges

He [Omar Khayyam] is an atheist, but knows how to interpret in orthodox style the most difficult passages of the Koran; for every educated man is a theologian and faith is not a requisite.

— Jorge Luis Borges

He thought that the rose was to be found in its own eternity and not in his words; and that we may mention or allude to a thing, but not express it.

— Jorge Luis Borges

He was very religious he believed that he had a secret pact with God which exempted him from doing good in exchange for prayers and piety.

— Jorge Luis Borges

Historical truth, for him, is not what has happened; it is what we judge to have happened.

— Jorge Luis Borges