Art is an invention of aesthetics, which in turn is an invention of philosophers... What we call art is a game.
Octavio Paz

Deserve your dream.
Octavio Paz

If we are a metaphor of the universe, the human couple is the metaphor par excellence, the point of intersection of all forces and the seed of all forms. The couple is time recaptured, the return to the time before time.
Octavio Paz

Literature is the expression of a feeling of deprivation, a recourse against a sense of something missing. But the contrary is also true: language is what makes us human. It is a recourse against the meaningless noise and silence of nature and history.
Octavio Paz

Love is an attempt at penetrating another being, but it can only succeed if the surrender is mutual.
Octavio Paz

Man does not speak because he thinks; he thinks because he speaks. Or rather, speaking is no different than thinking: to speak is to think.
Octavio Paz

Social criticism begins with grammar and the re-establishing of meanings.
Octavio Paz

Solitude is the profoundest fact of the human condition. Man is the only being who knows he is alone.
Octavio Paz

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

We are condemned to kill time, thus we die bit by bit.
Octavio Paz


What distinguishes modern art from the art of other ages is criticism.
Octavio Paz

Wisdom lies neither in fixity nor in change, but in the dialectic between the two.
Octavio Paz

Writers, you know, are the beggars of Western society.
Octavio Paz