QuoteProject
A writer's work is the product of laziness.
Jorge Luis Borges
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

This quote suggests that writers create their best work when they embrace idleness and reflection rather than constant activity.

Jorge Luis Borges implies that the most profound and impactful writing often stems from moments of laziness, where the writer allows thoughts to marinate rather than rushing to produce. It highlights the value of taking time to think and reflect, suggesting that creativity is not merely about productivity but also about intentional contemplation.

Themes

WriterWorkLazinessCreativityContemplation

In practice

Example use cases

In a creative writing class, to emphasize the importance of reflection in writing.

More from Jorge Luis Borges

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
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.
Jorge Luis BorgesRead
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.
Jorge Luis BorgesRead
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.
Jorge Luis BorgesRead
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.
Jorge Luis BorgesRead
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.
Jorge Luis BorgesRead

Similar quotes

It's so fine and yet so terrible to stand in front of a blank canvas.
Paul CezanneRead
I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.
MichelangeloRead
I couldn't have written things like 'Low' and 'Heroes,' those particular albums, if it hadn't have been for Berlin and the kind of atmosphere I felt there.
David BowieRead
Art invites us to know beauty and to solicit it, summon it, from even the most tragic of circumstances.
Toni MorrisonRead
A work of art may be understood as a conductor from the artist's mind to the viewer's. But it may never reach the viewer, or it may never leave the artist's mind.
Sol LewittRead
I don't usually give out advice or recipes, but you must let the person looking at the photograph go some of the way to finishing it. You should offer them a seed that will grow and open up their minds.
Robert DoisneauRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.