Octavio Paz
Octavio Paz
Octavio Paz Lozano; March 31, 1914 – April 19, 1998) was a Mexican poet and diplomat. He is considered by many as one of the most influential writers of the 20th century and one of the greatest poets of all time...
NationalityMexican
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth31 March 1914
CityMexico City, Mexico
CountryMexico
death civilization ends
A civilization that denies death ends by denying life.
waiting arrivals
Beyond myself, somewhere, I wait for my arrival.
self humans human-beings
a human being is never what he is but the self he seeks.
names two yesterday
...because two bodies, naked and entwined, leap over time, they are invulnerable, nothing can touch them, they return to the source. There is no you, no I, no tomorrow, no yesterday, no names, the truth of two in a single body, a single soul, oh total being...
creativity trying break
Each time we try to express ourselves we have to break with ourselves.
eye poetry ears
To read a poem is to hear it with our eyes; to hear it is to see it with our ears.
solitude facts
Solitude is the profoundest fact
confused yesterday space
Today we all speak, if not the same tongue, the same universal language. There is no one center, and time has lost its former coherence: East and West, yesterday and tomorrow exist as a confused jumble in each one of us. Different times and different spaces are combined in a here and now that is everywhere at once.
fighting evil
To fight evil is to fight ourselves.
adventure writing nerves
Ruy-Sanchez's works of fiction are always amazing: adventure, poetry and intelligence in a new geometry of words... His writing has nerve and agility, his intelligence is sharp without being cruel, his mood is sympathetic without complicity.
democracy chimera democracy-freedom
Without democracy freedom is a chimera
wall garden dust
Mineral cactai, quicksilver lizards in the adobe walls, the bird that punctures space, thirst, tedium, clouds of dust, impalpable epiphanies of wind. The pines taught me to talk to myself. In that garden I learnedto send myself off. Later there were no gardens.
purpose wonder possibility
The purpose of poetry is to restore to mankind the possibility to wonder.
tradition modern break
Tradition is no longer a continuity but a series of sharp breaks. The modern tradition is the tradition of revolt.