More Quotes by Octavio Paz
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.
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.
Reality is a staircase going neither up nor down, we don't move; today is today, always is today.
The purpose of poetry is to restore to mankind the possibility to wonder.
Love is the revelation of the other person's freedom.
Love is not a desire for beauty; it is a yearning for completion.
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 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.
Light is time thinking about itself.
Beyond myself, somewhere, I wait for my arrival.
