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“It is not an easy thing to alter the trajectory of your life. People have expectations on your behalf. You come to believe them yourself.”
― The Last Station: A Novel of Tolstoy's Last Year
― The Last Station: A Novel of Tolstoy's Last Year
“In dreams begin possibilities.”
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“Believe me, if you’re a teenager, you’re always in the damned woods. Literally, you’re in the woods — probably too much you’re in the woods. And metaphorically you’re in the woods, in your life.”
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“All writers would like to be overrated in their own lifetimes.”
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“...and he realized that he missed the old days of sailing, the ship almost willowy and hesitant, responsive to winds and weathers - not this hard, unthinking, mechanical drive toward a goal or destinations, so typical of the age itself.”
― The Passages of H. M.: A Novel of Herman Melville
― The Passages of H. M.: A Novel of Herman Melville
“Poetry is a language adequate to one's experience.”
― Why Poetry Matters
― Why Poetry Matters
“A personal library is an X-ray of the owner’s soul. It offers keys to a particular temperament, an intellectual disposition, a way of being in the world. Even how the books are arranged on the shelves deserves notice, even reflection. There is probably no such thing as complete chaos in such arrangements.”
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“This is my commandment,” Jesus said, putting before us a single ideal, “That you love one another, as I have loved you” (John 15:12). The simplicity and force of this statement take away the breath.”
― Jesus: The Human Face of God
― Jesus: The Human Face of God
“Test-oriented teaching strikes me as anti-educational, a kind of unpleasant game that subverts the real aim of education: to waken a student to her or his potential, and to pursue a subject of considerable importance without restrictions imposed by anything except the inherent demands of the material.”
― The Art of Teaching
― The Art of Teaching
“A horse,” he once said, “is the symbol of the rider’s soul.”
― The Last Station: A Novel of Tolstoy's Last Year
― The Last Station: A Novel of Tolstoy's Last Year
“Fictional characters soon take on a life of their own. They run with the bit between their teeth.”
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“Maxims & Other Quotes II
Exactly how we deal with our souls was at this moment the only question I thought worth asking. 181
Borges: What I most admire about Whitman is that he created Walt Whitman, an ideal projection not of himself but someone like him, a character every reader could find in his heart and admire. 184
Borges: Mythos, in Greek, is not a story that is false, it’s a story that is more than true. Myth is a tear in the fabric of reality, and immense energies pour through those holy fissures. Our stories, our poems, are rips in these holy fissures, as well, however slight. 193
Borges: Don’t question survival, mine or yours. More powers lie at your disposal than you realize. 194
Parini: I just don’t know enough.
Borges: Nor I. But we all proceed on insufficient knowledge. 195
Borges: I’ve found a name for myself. Borges the Reenactor! The problem is, one never wins old battles. The losses only mount. 250
Borges: Remember that the battle between good and evil persists, and the writer’s work is constantly to reframe the argument, so that readers make the right choices. Never work from vanity. … What does Eliot say? ‘Humility is endless’ … We fail, and we fail again. We pick ourselves up. I’ve done it a thousand times, Guiseppe. Borges only deepens. 251”
― Borges and Me: An Encounter
Exactly how we deal with our souls was at this moment the only question I thought worth asking. 181
Borges: What I most admire about Whitman is that he created Walt Whitman, an ideal projection not of himself but someone like him, a character every reader could find in his heart and admire. 184
Borges: Mythos, in Greek, is not a story that is false, it’s a story that is more than true. Myth is a tear in the fabric of reality, and immense energies pour through those holy fissures. Our stories, our poems, are rips in these holy fissures, as well, however slight. 193
Borges: Don’t question survival, mine or yours. More powers lie at your disposal than you realize. 194
Parini: I just don’t know enough.
Borges: Nor I. But we all proceed on insufficient knowledge. 195
Borges: I’ve found a name for myself. Borges the Reenactor! The problem is, one never wins old battles. The losses only mount. 250
Borges: Remember that the battle between good and evil persists, and the writer’s work is constantly to reframe the argument, so that readers make the right choices. Never work from vanity. … What does Eliot say? ‘Humility is endless’ … We fail, and we fail again. We pick ourselves up. I’ve done it a thousand times, Guiseppe. Borges only deepens. 251”
― Borges and Me: An Encounter
“But Jesus felt her yearning, her fragility masked by bravado. He always broke down barriers, never erected them.”
― Jesus: The Human Face of God
― Jesus: The Human Face of God
“Maxims & Other Quotes
If you need an adjective or adverb, you're still fishing for he right noun or verb. 34
Was this a true story? It seemed somehow unimaginable, a fantasy of some kind. But he told it with such conviction that, against my own wishes, I believed him.
Was this indeed the essence of storytelling? Did one simply have to relate a tale in a believable fashion, with the authority of the imagination? 36
Memory is a mirror that may easily shatter. 81
Readers become invisible even to themselves. Only the story lives. It’s the fate of the writer, yes, as well, to disappear. ~ Alastair Reid 83
‘There is only now,’ Borges exclaimed with unstoppable force. ‘Act, dear boy! Do not procrastinate! It’s the worst of sins. I’ve thought about this, you see: the progression toward evil. Murder, this is very bad, a sin. It leads to thievery. And thievery, of course, leads to drunkenness and Sabbath-breaking. And Sabbath-breaking leads to incivility and at last procrastination. A slippery slope into the pit!’ 98
Borges: I no longer need to save face. This is one of the benefits of extreme age. Nothing matters much, and very little matters at all. 100
Borges: Believe me, you will one day read Don Quixote with a profound sense of recollection. This happens when you read a classic. It finds you where you have been. 102
Parini: I try not to think of the phallus, except when I can think of nothing else, which is most of the time.
Borges: This is the fate of young men, a limited focus. One of the few advantages of my blindness has been that I no longer focus my eyes on objects of arousal. I look inward now, though the mind has mountains, dangerous cliffs. 105
Borges: Writers are always pirates, marauding, taking whatever pleases them from others, shaping these stolen goods to our purposes. Writers feed off the corpses of those who passed before them, their precursors. On the other hand they invent their precursors. They create them in their own image, as God did with man.108
Borges: Nobody can teach you anything. That’s the first truth. We teach ourselves. 115
Borges: One should avoid strong emotion, especially when it interferes with the work at hand. We have European blood in our veins, you and I. Mine is northern blood. We’re cold people, you see. Warriors. 125
Borges: The influence of Quixote was such that Sancho acquired a taste for literary wisdom. Such wisdom in his aphorisms! ‘One can find a remedy for everything but death.’ Or this: ‘Make yourself into honey and the flies will devour you.’ 151
Borges: You see, I designed my work for the tiniest audience, ‘fit company though few.’ A writer’s imagination should not be diluted by crowds! 151
Borges: If you don’t abandon the spirit, the spirit will not abandon you. 181”
― Borges and Me: An Encounter
If you need an adjective or adverb, you're still fishing for he right noun or verb. 34
Was this a true story? It seemed somehow unimaginable, a fantasy of some kind. But he told it with such conviction that, against my own wishes, I believed him.
Was this indeed the essence of storytelling? Did one simply have to relate a tale in a believable fashion, with the authority of the imagination? 36
Memory is a mirror that may easily shatter. 81
Readers become invisible even to themselves. Only the story lives. It’s the fate of the writer, yes, as well, to disappear. ~ Alastair Reid 83
‘There is only now,’ Borges exclaimed with unstoppable force. ‘Act, dear boy! Do not procrastinate! It’s the worst of sins. I’ve thought about this, you see: the progression toward evil. Murder, this is very bad, a sin. It leads to thievery. And thievery, of course, leads to drunkenness and Sabbath-breaking. And Sabbath-breaking leads to incivility and at last procrastination. A slippery slope into the pit!’ 98
Borges: I no longer need to save face. This is one of the benefits of extreme age. Nothing matters much, and very little matters at all. 100
Borges: Believe me, you will one day read Don Quixote with a profound sense of recollection. This happens when you read a classic. It finds you where you have been. 102
Parini: I try not to think of the phallus, except when I can think of nothing else, which is most of the time.
Borges: This is the fate of young men, a limited focus. One of the few advantages of my blindness has been that I no longer focus my eyes on objects of arousal. I look inward now, though the mind has mountains, dangerous cliffs. 105
Borges: Writers are always pirates, marauding, taking whatever pleases them from others, shaping these stolen goods to our purposes. Writers feed off the corpses of those who passed before them, their precursors. On the other hand they invent their precursors. They create them in their own image, as God did with man.108
Borges: Nobody can teach you anything. That’s the first truth. We teach ourselves. 115
Borges: One should avoid strong emotion, especially when it interferes with the work at hand. We have European blood in our veins, you and I. Mine is northern blood. We’re cold people, you see. Warriors. 125
Borges: The influence of Quixote was such that Sancho acquired a taste for literary wisdom. Such wisdom in his aphorisms! ‘One can find a remedy for everything but death.’ Or this: ‘Make yourself into honey and the flies will devour you.’ 151
Borges: You see, I designed my work for the tiniest audience, ‘fit company though few.’ A writer’s imagination should not be diluted by crowds! 151
Borges: If you don’t abandon the spirit, the spirit will not abandon you. 181”
― Borges and Me: An Encounter
“More and more, he relied on alcohol to numb himself from the pain of his relationship with Estelle, his anxiety about Meta, the difficulties of writing, and his inability to confront crises that inevitably came his way, such as the deaths of friends and family. Certainly the death of Dean continued to flood him with guilt over his part in encouraging his brother in his career as an aviator and, indeed, selling him the plane that had brought him down.”
― One Matchless Time: A Life of William Faulkner
― One Matchless Time: A Life of William Faulkner
“Writers are always pirates, marauding, taking whatever pleases them from others, shaping these stolen goods to our purposes.”
― Borges and Me
― Borges and Me
“Robert Frost suggested (with his usual sly wit) that a person uneducated in the operations of metaphor was not safe in the world, should not even be let out of doors.”
― Why Poetry Matters
― Why Poetry Matters
“Confucius said the doctrine of the mean was the highest virtue, and rare among men. The Buddhists call it the middle way. Aristotle saw moderation as the essence of virtue. I say moderation in all things, even moderation.”
― Borges and Me: An Encounter
― Borges and Me: An Encounter
“Jesus had upset the temporal authorities, and political consequences would surely follow.”
― Jesus: The Human Face of God
― Jesus: The Human Face of God
“Ideas arise independently from the same mysterious source.”
― Borges and Me: An Encounter
― Borges and Me: An Encounter
