Vintage Q&A …

… An Interview with Jorge Luis Borges | Commonweal Magazine. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Now as to a personal god, I don't like to think of God as a person—though I'm quite fond of people, and I suppose I'm a person myself, after all. But I don't think I have any use for a god who is very much interested, let us say, in ethics, in what I am doing. I would rather like to think of God as being a kind of adventurer—even as Wells thought about him—or perhaps as something within us making for some unknown purpose. I don't think I can really believe in doomsday; I could hardly believe in rewards and punishments, in heaven or hell. As I wrote down in one of my sonnets—I seem to be always plagiarizing, imitating myself or somebody else for that matter—I think I am quite unworthy of heaven or of hell, and even of immortality. I mean I might accept immortality, if I had to do it. But I would prefer—if there is any afterlife—to know nothing whatever about Borges, about his experiences in this world. But I suppose identity depends on memory. And if my memory is blotted out, then I wonder if I exist—I mean, if I am the same person. Of course, I don't have to solve that problem. It's up to God, if any. So that I ask of any God, of any gods, that if they give immortality, I hope to be granted oblivion also.