More Quotes by Octavio Paz
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.
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.
Love is an attempt at penetrating another being, but it can only succeed if the surrender is mutual.
Poetry is not truth, it is the resurrection of presences.
Love is born at first sight; the friendship of a frequent and lengthy exchange.
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.
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.
Light is time thinking about itself.
By suppressing differences and peculiarities, by eliminating different civilizations and cultures, progress weakens life and favors death
