The American War of Independence is the expulsion of the intrusive elements, alien to the American essence. If American reality is the reinvention of itself, whatever is found in any way irreducible or unassimilable is not American. -Octavio Paz Independence
Self-discovery is above all the realization that we are alone: it is the opening of an impalpable, transparent wall - that of our consciousness - between the world and ourselves. -Octavio Paz Alone
Literature is the expression of a feeling of deprivation, a recourse against a sense of something missing. But the contrary is also true: language is what makes us human. It is a recourse against the meaningless noise and silence of nature and history. -Octavio Paz History
Technology is neutral and sterile. Now, technology is the nature of modern man; it is our environment and our horizon. Of course, every work of man is a negation of nature, but at the same time, it is a bridge between nature and us. Technology changes nature in a more radical and decisive manner: it throws it out. -Octavio Paz Technology
To read a poem is to hear it with our eyes; to hear it is to see it with our ears. -Octavio Paz Poetry
Solitude is the profoundest fact of the human condition. Man is the only being who knows he is alone. -Octavio Paz Alone
The idea of modernity is beginning to lose its vitality. It is losing it because modernity is no longer a critical attitude but an accepted, codified convention. -Octavio Paz Attitude
Surrealism is not a poetry but a poetics, and even more, and more decisively, a world vision. -Octavio Paz Poetry
Man is alone everywhere. But the solitude of the Mexican, under the great stone night of the high plateau that is still inhabited by insatiable gods, is very different from that of the North American, who wanders in an abstract world of machines, fellow citizens and moral precepts. -Octavio Paz Alone
Man is alone everywhere. But the solitude of the Mexican, under the great stone night of the high plateau that is still inhabited by insatiable gods, is very different from that of the North American, who wanders in an abstract world of machines, fellow citizens and moral precepts. -Octavio Paz Great
A society is defined as much by how it comes to terms with its past as by its attitude toward the future: its memories are no less revealing than its aims. -Octavio Paz Attitude
Wisdom lies neither in fixity nor in change, but in the dialectic between the two. A constant coming and going: wisdom lies in the momentary. -Octavio Paz Wisdom
Literature is the expression of a feeling of deprivation, a recourse against a sense of something missing. But the contrary is also true: language is what makes us human. It is a recourse against the meaningless noise and silence of nature and history. -Octavio Paz Nature
Poetry, whatever the manifest content of the poem, is always a violation of the rationalism and morality of bourgeois society. -Octavio Paz Poetry
I think we all have our own personality, unique and distinctive, and at the same time, I think that our own unique and distinctive personality blends with the wind, with the footsteps in the street, with the noises around the corner, and with the silence of memory, which is the great producer of ghosts. -Octavio Paz Great
Poetry is the experience of liberty. The poet risks himself, chances all on the poem's all with each verse he writes. -Octavio Paz Poetry
Any reflection about poetry should begin, or end, with this question: who and how many read poetry books? -Octavio Paz Poetry
Art is an invention of aesthetics, which in turn is an invention of philosophers... What we call art is a game. -Octavio Paz Art
Poetry is not a genre in harmony with the modern world; its innermost nature is hostile or indifferent to the dogmas of modern times, progress and the cult of the future. -Octavio Paz Poetry
