Octavio Paz

“Love is an attempt to penetrate another being, but it can only be realized if the surrender is mutual.”

“Beyond myself, somewhere, I wait for my arrival.”

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

“A civilization that denies death ends by denying life.”

“What sets worlds in motion is the interplay of differences, their attractions and repulsions. Life is plurality, death is uniformity.”

“Deserve your dream.”

“To love is to choose.”

“Without freedom, there is no art. Art lives only on the restraints it imposes on itself, and dies of all others.”

“The poet does not wish to be admired, he wishes to be believed.”

“A single word is a seed that can give rise to a thousand thoughts.”

“Rebellion is the rock of the dispossessed. What is a poet? A poet is a rebel.”

“Art is a way of possessing destiny.”

“The universe is a vast system of signs.”

“Our lives are a battlefield on which is fought a civil war between the heart and the mind.”

“The highest form of love is to be the protector of another person's solitude.”

“Time has no other side, no back, no reverse. It is not a river but a growing wound.”

“A nation without elections is a nation without a voice.”

“Poetry is the other voice. It is not the voice of history or of anti-history, but the voice that, in history, is always saying something different.”

“The Mexican... is familiar with death. He jokes about it, caresses it, sleeps with it, celebrates it.”

“The present is perpetual.”