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About this quote

What does it mean?
Literature can tolerate vagueness because human life itself is often imprecise and believable rather than exact.
In plain terms
Books can be vague because life is often vague too.
What can you take from it?
Imperfection in art mirrors the imprecision of real life.

Where it applies

  • writing fiction
  • reading stories
  • discussing realism

Putting it to work

  • accept ambiguity in writing
  • focus on emotional truth over facts

Questions to consider

  • Is life more precise than stories?
  • Should art mirror life's messiness?

Another view

Some contexts require strict accuracy rather than verisimilitude.

More from Jorge Luis Borges

  1. Life and death have been lacking in my life.

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  2. The exercise of letters is sometimes linked to the ambition to contruct an absolute book, a book of books that includes the others like a Platonic archetype, a…

    Permalink to quote #42
  3. Reality is not always probable, or likely. But if you're writing a story, you have to make it as plausible as you can, because if not, the reader's imagination…

    Permalink to quote #39

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