أنا الذي كنت عدة أشخاص بلا طائل، أريد أن أكون شخصاً واحداً، أنا نفسي - Jorge Luis Borges

Hay quienes no pueden imaginar un mundo sin pájaros; hay quienes no pueden imaginar un mundo sin agua; en lo que a mi se refiere, soy incapaz de imaginar un mundo sin libros.

There are those who cannot imagine a world without birds; there are those who cannot imagine a world without water; but in my case I am unable to imagine a world without books.

No estoy seguro de que yo exista, en realidad. Soy todos los autores que he leído, toda la gente que he conocido, todas las mujeres que he amado. Todas las ciudades que he visitado, todos mis antepasados...

Some days past I have found a curious confirmation of the fact that what is truly native can and often does dispense with local color; I found this confirmation in Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Gibbon observes that in the Arabian book par excellence, in the Koran, there are no camels; I believe if there were any doubt as to the authenticity of the Koran, this absence of camels would be sufficient to prove it is an Arabian work. It was written by Mohammed, and Mohammed, as an Arab, had no reason to know that camels were especially Arabian; for him they were part of reality, he had no reason to emphasize them; on the other hand, the first thing a falsifier, a tourist, an Arab nationalist would do is have a surfeit of camels, caravans of camels, on every page; but Mohammed, as an Arab, was unconcerned: he knew he could be an Arab without camels. I think we Argentines can emulate Mohammed, can believe in the possibility of being Argentine without abounding in local color.