You can't measure time by days, the way you measure money by dollars and cents, because dollars are all the same while every day is different and maybe every hour as well.
Jorge Luis BorgesRead
In vain have oceans been squandered on you, in vain the sun, wonderfully seen through Whitman’s eyes. You have used up the years and they have used up you, and still, and still, you have not written the poem.
Interpretation
The quote reflects on wasted potential and the failure to create art despite abundant inspiration.
Jorge Luis Borges expresses a deep sense of disappointment regarding unfulfilled creative potential. The imagery of oceans and the sun symbolizes the vastness of life and beauty that has been squandered on the individual, highlighting the anguish of not having produced a meaningful work, such as a poem, despite the richness of the experiences one has had. This serves as a poignant reminder of the urgency to create and contribute artistically before time runs out.
In practice
In a discussion about creative blocks during a writing workshop.
You can't measure time by days, the way you measure money by dollars and cents, because dollars are all the same while every day is different and maybe every hour as well.
To say good-bye is to deny separation; it is to say Today we play at going our own ways, but we'll see each other tomorrow. Men invented farewells because they somehow knew themselves to be immortal, even while seeing themselves as contingent and ephemeral.
The execution was set for the 29th of March, at nine in the morning. This delay was due to a desire on the part of the authorities to act slowly and impersonally, in the manner of planets or vegetables.
This felicitous supposition declared that there is only one Individual, and that this indivisible Individual is every one of the separate beings in the universe, and that these beings are the instruments and masks of divinity itself.
A man sets out to draw the world. As the years go by, he peoples a space with images of provinces, kingdoms, mountains, bays, ships, islands, fishes, rooms, instruments, stars, horses, and individuals. A short time before he dies, he discovers that the patient labyrinth of lines traces the lineaments of his own face.
Let neither tear nor reproach besmirch this declaration of the mastery of God who, with magnificent irony, granted me both the gift of books and the night.
I start to think, and then I sink_x000D_ _x000D_ Into the paper like I was ink_x000D_ _x000D_ When I'm writing, I'm trapped in between the lines_x000D_ _x000D_ I escape when I finish the rhyme.
Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.
The writer is the visionary of his people... He anticipates, he warns.
Glamour doesn’t just happen, people don’t wake up in the morning glamorous.
Real magic can never be made by offering someone else's liver. You must tear out your own, and not expect to get it back.
I really subscribe to that old adage that you should never let the audience get ahead of you for a second. So if the film's abrasive and wrongfoots people then, y'know, that's great. But I hope it involves an audience.
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