What you really value is what you miss, not what you have.

Reality is not always probable, or likely.

I, who have been so many men in vain, want to be one man, myself alone. From out of a whirlwind the voice of God replied: I am not, either. I dreamed the world the way you dreamed your work, my Shakespeare: one of the forms of my dream was you, who, like me, are many and one.

Any life, no matter how long and complex it may be, is made up of a single moment-the moment in which a man finds out, once and for all, who he is.

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.

That is what always happens: we never know whether we are victors or whether we are defeated.

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

If a writer disbelieves what he is writing, then he can hardly expect his reader to believe it.

A writer needs loneliness, and he gets his share of it. He needs love, and he gets shared and also unshared love. In fact, he needs the universe. To be a writer is, in a sense, to be a daydreamer-to be living a kind of double life.