I might accept immortality, if I had to do it. But I would prefer - if there is any afterlife - to know nothing whatever about Borges, about his experiences in this world.

So plant your own gardens and decorate your own soul, instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers.

Being with you and not being with you is the only way I have to measure time.

Don't talk unless you can improve the silence.

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.

I cannot sleep unless I am surrounded by books.

The worst labyrinth is not that intricate form that can entrap us forever, but a single and precise straight line

The fact is that poetry is not the books in the library . . . Poetry is the encounter of the reader with the book, the discovery of the book.

Nothing is built on stone; all is built on sand, but we must build as if the sand were stone.

I can give you my loneliness, my darkness, the hunger of my heart, I am trying to bribe you with uncertainty, with danger, with defeat.

The original is unfaithful to the translation.

the heart aches through nights—the broken places of neglect

A tourist is a fellow who drives thousands of miles so he can be photographed standing in front of his car.

I'm a huge freak, and always have been. I spent the first part of my life trying really desperately not to be one, and it was just a waste of time.

New Yorkers are predatory about real estate. When they sense softening, they move in for the kill.

The word love is never mentioned in big business.

The question of questions for the politicians should ever be-What type of social structure am I tending to produce? But this is a question he never entertains.

The incurable ills are the imaginary ills.

We're not going to have a perfect batting average and it's important that Americans understand that.

Nostalgia for what we have lost is more bearable than nostalgia for what we have never had, for the first involves knowledge and pleasure, the second only ignorance and pain.

The grandchildren should not bear the debts of the grandparents.