And yet, and yet ... Denying temporal succession, denying the self, denying the astronomical universe, are obvious acts of desperation and secret consolation. Our fate (unlike the hell of Swedenborg or the hell of Tibetan mythology) is not frightful because it is unreal; it is frightful because it is irreversible and ironclad. Time is the thing I am made of. Time is a river that sweeps me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger that tears me apart, but I am the tiger; it is a fire that consumes me, but I am the fire. The world, unfortunately, is real; I, unfortunately, am Borges. --

Attribution: Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986), Argentinian author. “New Refutation of Time” [”Nueva refutación del tiempo”], Other Inquisitions [Otras inquisiciones] (1952).

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http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,904566,00.html

[..]  In a story called The Meeting, two youths start quarreling over cards. They are drawn to a cabinet containing the knives of famous duelists of the past. They fight, one is killed, the other breaks down in tears over his senseless deed. Was it the weapons or the men that fought, asks Borges. It was "as though the knives were coming awake after a long sleep side by side in the cabinet. Even after their gauchos were dust, the knives—the knives, not their tools, the men—knew how to fight." [..]

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http://www.thenation.com/doc/19990531/parini/2

In the prose Epilogue to The Maker, for example, he writes:

 

A man sets himself the task of portraying the world. Over the years he fills a given surface with images of provinces and kingdoms, mountains, bays, ships, islands, fish, rooms, instruments, heavenly bodies, horses, and people. Shortly before he dies he discovers that this patient labyrinth of lines is a drawing of his own face.