Quotes from The Garden of Forking Paths

“In a riddle whose answer is chess, what is the only prohibited word?”
― Jorge Luis Borges, quote from The Garden of Forking Paths

“This web of time – the strands of which approach one another, bifurcate, intersect or ignore each other through the centuries – embraces every possibility. We do not exist in most of them. In some you exist and not I, while in others I do, and you do not.”
― Jorge Luis Borges, quote from The Garden of Forking Paths

“In all fiction, when a man is faced with alternatives he chooses one at the expense of the others. In the almost unfathomable Ts'ui Pen, he chooses – simultaneously – all of them. He thus creates various futures, various times which start others that will in their turn branch out and bifurcate in other times. That is the cause of the contradictions in the novel.”
― Jorge Luis Borges, quote from The Garden of Forking Paths

“To think is to ignore the differences, to generalize, to abstract.”
― Jorge Luis Borges, quote from The Garden of Forking Paths

“Diferentemente de Newton e de Schopenhauer, seu antepassado não acretitava num tempo uniforme, absoluto. Acreditava em infinitas séries de tempos, numa rede crescente e vertiginosa de tempos que se aproximam, se bifurcam, se cortam ou que secularmente se ignoram, abrange todas as possibilidades. Não existimos na maioria desses tempos; nalguns existe o senhor e não eu. Noutros, eu, não o senhor; noutros, os dois. Neste, que um acaso favorável me surpreende, o senhor chegou a minha casa; noutro, o senhor, ao atravessar o jardim, encontrou-me morto; noutro, digo estas mesmas palavras, mas sou um erro, um fantasma.”
― Jorge Luis Borges, quote from The Garden of Forking Paths

“Cervantes' text and Menard's are verbally identical; but the second is almost infinitely richer.”
― Jorge Luis Borges, quote from The Garden of Forking Paths

“I kept asking myself how a book could be infinite. I could not imagine any other than a cyclic volume, circular. A volume whose last page would be the same as the first and so have the possibility of continuing indefinitely.”
― Jorge Luis Borges, quote from The Garden of Forking Paths

“I thought that a man might be an enemy of other men, of the differing moments of other men, but never an enemy of a country: not of fireflies, words, gardens, streams, or the West wind.”
― Jorge Luis Borges, quote from The Garden of Forking Paths

“Lost in these imaginary illusions I forgot my destiny – that of the hunted.”
― Jorge Luis Borges, quote from The Garden of Forking Paths

“I carried out my plan because I felt The Chief had some fear of those of my race, of those uncountable forebears whose culmination lies in me. I wished to prove to him that a yellow man could save his armies.”
― Jorge Luis Borges, quote from The Garden of Forking Paths

“Tek bir insanın yaptığı, sanki bütün insanlar tarafından yapılmış gibidir. Bu nedenle cennet bahçesindeki söz dinlemezliğin bütün insanlığı kirletmesi haksızlık sayılmaz; gene bu nedenle tek bir Yahudi'nin çarmıha gerilmesinin insanlığı kurtarmaya yetmesi de haksızlık sayılmaz. Belki de Schopenhauer haklıydı; ben başkalarıyım, her insan bütün insanlardır. Shakespeare de neredeyse, zavallı John Vincent Moon'dur.”
― Jorge Luis Borges, quote from The Garden of Forking Paths

“At the railroad station he noted that he still had thirty minutes. He quickly recalled that in a cafe on the Calle Brazil (a few dozen feet from Yrigoyen's house) there was an enormous cat which allowed itself to be caressed as if it were a disdainful divinity. He entered the cafe. There was the cat, asleep. He ordered a cup of coffee, slowly stirred the sugar, sipped it (this pleasure had been denied him in the clinic), and thought, as he smoothed the cat's black coat, that this contact was an illusion and that the two beings, man and cat, were as good as separated by a glass, for man lives in time, in succession, while the magical animal lives in the present, in the eternity of the instant.”
― Jorge Luis Borges, quote from The Garden of Forking Paths

“On üçüncü yüzyılın son yıllarında yaşayan bir leopar, sabahın şafağından akşamın alacakaranlığına kadar birkaç kalas, birkaç demir parmaklık, durmadan değişen erkek ve kadın yüzleri, bir duvar ve belki de kuru yapraklarla dolu taş bir yalak gördü. Sevgiyi ve yırtıcılığı, avını parçalamanın harlı zevkini, geyik kokuları getiren rüzgârı özledi­ğini bilemedi, bilemezdi. Gene de içinde bir şeyler tıkandı, bir şeyler isyan etti ve Tanrı ona rüyasında şunları söyledi: “Kullarımdan biri seni şu kadar kere görsün ve seni evrenin düzeninde yeri önceden belli bir şiirde bir suret ve simge olarak kullansın diye bu hapishanede yaşayacak ve öleceksin. Şimdi tutsaksın, ama şiire bir sözcük katmış olacaksın.”
― Jorge Luis Borges, quote from The Garden of Forking Paths

“I thought of a labyrinth of labyrinths, of one sinuous spreading labyrinth that would encompass the past and the future and in some way involve the stars.”
― Jorge Luis Borges, quote from The Garden of Forking Paths

About the author

Popular quotes

“No more crying. It's all wetness and no comfort at all.”
― Shannon Hale, quote from The Goose Girl

“How life is strange and changeful, and the crystal is in the steel at the point of fracture, and the toad bears a jewel in its forehead, and the meaning of moments passes like the breeze that scarcely ruffles the leaf of the willow.”
― Robert Penn Warren, quote from All the King's Men

“Floyd sometimes wondered if the Newspad, and the fantastic technology behind it, was the last word in man’s quest for perfect communications. Here he was, far out in space, speeding away from Earth at thousands of miles an hour, yet in a few milliseconds he could see the headlines of any newspaper he pleased. (That very word “newspaper,” of course, was an anachronistic hangover into the age of electronics.) The text was updated automatically on every hour; even if one read only the English versions, one could spend an entire lifetime doing nothing but absorbing the everchanging flow of information from the news satellites. It was hard to imagine how the system could be improved or made more convenient. But sooner or later, Floyd guessed, it would pass away, to be replaced by something as unimaginable as the Newspad itself would have been to Caxton or Gutenberg.”
― Arthur C. Clarke, quote from 2001: A Space Odyssey

“Once in my life I knew a grief so hard I could actually hear it inside, scraping at the lining of my stomach, an audible ache, dredging with hooks as rivers are dredged when someone’s been missing too long.”
― Leif Enger, quote from Peace Like a River

“Sparrows and cats will live in my shoe,
Sooner than I will live with you.
Fish will come walking out of the sea,
Sooner than you will come back to me.”
― Peter S. Beagle, quote from The Last Unicorn

Interesting books

About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.