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Exlpore more Art quotes

"The proper stuff of fiction does not exist everything is the proper stuff of fiction every feeling every thought every quality of brain and spirit is drawn upon no perception comes amiss. And if we can imagine the art of fiction come alive and standing in our midst she would undoubtedly bid us break her and bully her as well as honour and love her for so her youth is renewed and her sovereignty assured."

"Photograph: a picture painted by the sun without instruction in art."

"I place my fingers upon these keys typing 2,000 dreams per minute and naked of spirit dance forth my cosmic vortex upon this crucifix called language."

"The capacity to be puzzled is the premise of all creation, be it in art or in science."

"I see my life in terms of music."

"Professing not to care is a primordial defense mechanism. Whenever a person finds oneself mired in failure and despondency, rebelling is a viable option to preserve false personal pride."

"Why poetry, you ask? Because of life, I answer."
Explore more quotes by Jorge Luis Borges

"The gods weave misfortunes for men, so that the generations to come will have something to sing about. Mallarmé repeats, less beautifully, what Homer said; "tout aboutit en un livre, everything ends up in a book. The Greeks speak of generations that will sing; Mallarmé speaks of an object, of a thing among things, a book. But the idea is the same; the idea that we are made for art, we are made for memory, we are made for poetry, or perhaps we are made for oblivion. But something remains, and that something is history or poetry, which are not essentially different."

"And so, as I sleep, some dream beguiles me, and suddenly I know I dream.Then I think: this is a dream, a pure diversion of my will; now that I have unlimited power, I am going to create a tiger.Oh incompetence! Never do my dreams engender the wild beast I longed for.The tiger indeed appears, but stuffed or flimsy, or with impure variations of shape, or of an implausible size, or all too fleeting, or with a touch of the dog or bird."

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

"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 I have visited."

"In the order of literature, as in others, there is no act that is not the coronation of an infinite series of causes and the source of an infinite series of effects."

"And yet, and yet, Denying temporal succession, denying the self, denying the astronomical universe, are apparent desperations and secret consolations. Our destiny, is not frightful by being unreal; it is frightful because it is irreversible and iron-clad. Time is the substance I am made of. Time is a river which sweeps me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger which destroys me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire which consumes me, but I am the fire. The world, unfortunately, is real; I, unfortunately, am Borges."

"We spend our lives waiting for our book and it never comes."

"We are ignorant of the meaning of the dragon in the same way that we are ignorant of the meaning of the universe; but there is something in the dragon's image that fits man's imagination, and this accounts for the dragon's appearance in different places and periods."

"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."
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