Collected Non-fiction of Borges

I would recommend this hypothesis: imprecision it tolerable or plausible in literature because we almost always tend toward it in reality. The conceptual simplification of complex states is often an instantaneous operation. The very fact of perceiving, of paying attention, is selective; all attention, all focusing of our consciousness, involves a deliberate omission of what is not interesting. We see and hear through memories, fears, expectations,. In bodily terms, unconsciousness is a necessary condition of physical acts. our body knows how to articulate this difficult paragraph, how to contend with stairways, knots, overpasses, cities, fast-running rivers, dogs, how to cross the street without being run down by traffic, how to procreate, how to breathe, how to sleep, and perhaps how to kill: our body, not our intellect. For us, living is a series of adaptations, which is to say, an education in oblivion.

To live is to lose time; we can recover or keep nothing except under the form of eternity.

A German scholar, around 1731, spent many pages debating the issue of whether Adam was the best politician of his time, the best historian, and the best geographer and topographer. This charming hypothesis takes into account not only the perfection of the paradisiacal state and the total absence of competitors but also the simplicity of certain topics in those early days of the world. The history of the universe was the history of the universe's only inhabitant. The past was seven days old: how easy it was to be an archeologist!