The American: a titan enamored of progress, a fanatical giant who worships "getting things done" but never asks himself what he is doing nor why he is doing it.

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The Mexican...is familiar with death. [He] jokes about it, caresses it, sleeps with it, celebrates it. It is one of his favorite toys and his most steadfast love.

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Love is not a desire for beauty; it is a yearning for completion.

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Every view of the world that becomes extinct, every culture that disappears, diminishes a possibility of life

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I don't believe that there are dangerous writers: the danger of certain books is not in the books themselves but in the passions of their readers.

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There is nothing sacred or untouchable except the freedom to think. Without criticism, that is to say, without rigor and experimentation, there is no science, without criticism there is no art or literature. I would also say that without criticism there is no healthy society.

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Distraction is our habitual state. Not the distraction of the person who withdraws from the world in order to shut himself up in the secret and ever-changing land of his fantasy, but the distraction of the person who is always outside himself, lost in the trivial, senseless, turmoil of everyday life.

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Poetry is not truth, it is the resurrection of presences.

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To read a poem is to hear it with our eyes; to hear it is to see it with our ears.

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A civilization that denies death ends by denying life.

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