Jorge Luis Borges

It seemed incredible to me that day without premonitions or symbols should be the one of my inexorable death.

In a riddle whose answer is chess, what is the only prohibited word?

My undertaking is not difficult, essentially... I should only have to be immortal to carry it out.

Thus fought the heroes, tranquil their admirable hearts, violent their swords, resigned to kill and to die.

Fame is a form—perhaps the worst form—of incomprehension.

I foresee that man will resign himself each day to more atrocious undertakings; soon there will be no one but warriors and brigands; I give them this counsel: The author of an atrocious undertaking ought to imagine that he has already accomplished it, ought to impose upon himself a future as irrevocable as the past.

I reflected that everything happens to a man precisely, precisely now. Centuries of centuries and only in the present do things happen; countless men in the air, on the face of the earth and the sea, and all that really is happening is happening to me . . .