292 Quotes by Octavio Paz

Poetry,like history, is made;poetry,like truth, is seen.

In my house there were more dead than living.My mother, a thousand-year-old girl,mother of the world, my orphan,self-sacrificing, ferocious, stubborn, provident,titmouse, bitch, ant, wild boar,love letter with spelling mistakes;my mother: bread I'd slicewith her own knife each day.

En alguna parte hay un lugar vacío y ese vacío se llenará de mí y yo me asentaré en ese hueco que insesiblemente rebosará de mí, pleno de mí hasta volverse fuente o surtidor. Y mi vacío, el vacío de mí que soy ahora, se llenará de sí, pleno de ser hasta los bordes.

Tell me how you die and I will tell you who you are.

Light is time reflecting on time.

When a society decays, it is language that is first to become gangrenous. As a result, social criticism begins with grammar and the re-establishing of meanings

A TODOS, en algún momento, se nos ha revelado nuestra existencia como algo particular, intransferible y precioso. Casi siempre esta revelación se sitúa en la adolescencia. Eldescubrimiento de nosotros mismos se manifiesta como un sabernos solos; entre el mundo y nosotros se abre una impalpable, transparente muralla: la de nuestra conciencia.

I thought that the world was a vast system of signs, a conversation between giant beings. My actions, the cricket's saw, the star's blink, were nothing but pauses and syllables, scattered phrases from that dialogue. What word could it be, of which I was only a syllable? Who speaks the word? To whom is it spoken?

Everything is language.