More Quotes by Octavio Paz
Beyond myself, somewhere, I wait for my arrival.
For every language that becomes extinct, an image of man disappears.
The beloved is already in our being, as thirst and "otherness." Being is eroticism. Inspiration is that strange voice that takes man out of himself to be every thing that he is, everything that he desires; another body, another being. Beyond, outside of me, in the green and gold thicket, among the tremulous branches, sings the unknown. It calls to me.
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.
A civilization that denies death ends by denying life.
Each time we try to express ourselves we have to break with ourselves.
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.
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.
Modern man likes to pretend that his thinking is wide-awake. But this wide-awake thinking has led us into the mazes of a nightmare in which the torture chambers are endlessly repeated in the mirrors of reason.
My body, plowed by your body, will turn into a field where one is sown and a hundred reaped.
